Black Widow: Hero in Black
by The Alpha Gray Wolf
Summary: Natasha Romanoff, legendary assassin, becomes number one on Homeland Security's most wanted list. There's no agency in the world Natasha Romanoff can't beat but Nat isn't trying to run, she's trying to figure out what really happened that put her on Homeland Security's list. Set in an alternate universe on Earth-192322, acts as a parallel universe to the actual Black Widow movie.
1. A Foreseeable Future

**Disclaimer: I only own the stuff I made up. The rest belongs to Marvel, song artists, etc.**

**Starring: Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons, and Jaime Murray as Rose.**

**Extended Summary**

**One year after the fall of the Red Room, Natasha Romanoff is living the quiet and stereotypical life of a woman, staying home to take care of her niece. She thought she left her career as an assassin behind her but her red ledger catches up to her when she becomes number one on Homeland Security's most wanted list. There's no agency in the world that Natasha Romanoff can't beat, but Nat isn't trying to run, she's trying to figure what really happened that put her in Homeland Security's crosshairs because her final fate of herself and her loved ones could depend on it. Set in an alternate universe on Earth 192322, acts as a parallel universe to the actual _Black Widow_ movie.**

* * *

North Carolina Beach

The sun. it was the one thing that kept us alive in times when it is cold. It is also the thing that can kill us without shoving a knife into our hearts. The sun, a circular ball of fire floating in the sky, millions of miles out of our reach. Too much sun exposure and you'll get sunburned. Too little sun exposure and you're as pale as a vampire. But just enough, you'll get a tan outline on your body.

And that was Natalie Rushman's goal.

"Ow," she grumbles as she sits up and touches her scar on her appendix area. "Still hurts like shit."

Natalie Rushman sits up in a white beach chair, wearing nothing but a black bikini and has her hair as red as an apple hanging loose over her head and the wind blows at it like it was trying to extinguish a fire. She touches at the stitches on her flesh with her right arm before she stands up onto the sandy beach and stretches like she just spent three days crawling inside a log.

"What a beautiful day and my stitches have to reopen," she said as she looks out to the sea, the waves breaking like there was no tomorrow. "Goddamn wound." She reaches over and picks up a khaki-colored purse and digs inside. She takes out a roll of gauze and uses it on her wound as blood starts to seep through the stitches like water through a door crack. After she finishes wrapping up, she puts her purse over her shoulder and walks away, stepping over a sandcastle that a child built just a few moments ago. She was so tempted to kick the sandcastle down, teach children a lesson about leaving things undefended, but decided that she should just let children be children. _After all, I was a child without a care in the world._

Natalie walks across the beach, heading for a pier that was a quarter of a mile away and stretched at least a thousand yards over the ocean. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pair of sunglasses that were slightly too big for her but that was all she could afford at the hotel gift shop. I know, a shock: There are some things even Natalie Rushman can't afford...or she is just playing dumb with some kind of target in mind.

That was what she was hoping for when she stepped over a man sunbathing on a purple and white striped towel while laying on his back like a sunbathing whale.

"Hey," the man called to Natalie.

Natalie stops and turns around.

The man who called out to Natalie had a tan skin tone from the sun and was wearing nothing but a pair of orange swimming trunks. Natalie studied his face and noticed the beard that ran from ear to ear and made him look like a caveman. He had his hair shaved recently and now it looked like a Chia pet that was only half an inch tall.

He gets up from his spot and approaches Natalie with a smile on his face. Natalie looks down at his flabby stomach and realizes that he was out of shape and fat. If men could get pregnant, that's what he would look like.

"How are you doing?" Natalie asked and put on a Russian accent along with a seductive tone that only a skilled seductress could achieve. Basically, she spoke in a way that could seduce any man with her Russian accent. "What can I help you with?"

"Are you with Harry Daze and his group?" he asked with a New York accent. Natalie considered this to be weird because they were on the Carolina Beach. What is a New Yorker doing in North Carolina when he could be a New Yorker and speak with a Brooklyn accent? She's always wondered how people with Brooklyn accents pronounced Brooklyn. Apparently, they say don't pronounce certain syllables in their sentences. Fine with her.

"I don't know any Harry Dazes," she said slyly. "But I've heard of a man of your reputation: Gilbert Wiles." She put a hand on his shoulder and held with firm pressure. "I've always been intrigued by the company in which you work. It's called A.I.M. I presume."

"That would be correct," he said. He smiled like a giddy schoolboy. "Advanced Idea Mechanics, are you a fan?"

Natalie cocked her head to the side and placed her hand on his chest, feeling for bones. Skeleton bones. This guy had no physical fitness whatsoever. "I most certainly am. I think it was fate that you called me here. Maybe it was fate that leads me to this beach."

_And it is going to be the fate for what comes next._

"What is your name, miss?"

She thought for a second before she answered. "Call me, Natalie Rushman. I've already said your name so no need to introduce yourself." _But I do know that Gilbert Wiles isn't your real name so you're going to be remembered in death as Gilbert. What kind of a name is GIlbert? I wouldn't even name my dog that._

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Rushman." He grabbed her hand and kissed it. How polite of a gentleman he is.

_What a deer, I'd like to hang you on my wall._

"I know this seems sudden," Natalie said. "But since I'm just meeting up with someone who works for the AIM company, I was wondering if you could fulfill my dreams in showing me one of your labs." She perked a smile on her face. An innocent smile. Or was it? "I'm sure I can/..give you something in return."

Natalie didn't miss the smile that came across Gilbert's face. He looked like a boy who was being asked by his long-time crush to go to prom.

_As if I would take this fat wad to prom? I'd rather duct tape my mouth shut and die of starvation._

Advanced Idea Mechanics. A large mechanical engineering company spanning from New York to North Carolina and even has partners all over the world. Russia, China, and England have made deals with AIM and most of the products that AIM sells to these countries are made with stuff that only cost pennies. Putting them together costs dollars. Thousands of dollars. It was like a gold mine for this company. They were respected by the public, children looked up to them to become mechanical engineers, and they've made over $1.2 billion dollars in their ten years of activities. But this was all the public knew. What they didn't know about AIM was that AIM had a different meaning. Sure, it is has a fancy acronym that sounds catchy, but AIM has a double meaning. Only people working within AIM know what this means and AIM even made bets amongst each other that if someone from the outside world who has no connection to AIM is able to figure out the double meaning to the acronym, then that person would be paid thirty million dollars in cash, then silenced permanently.

Natalie should've been nervous like a normal person when Gilbert Wiles escorted her from the beach to an office building downtown, but she wasn't a normal person. She was superior to the regular person and she could walk through hell and not get burned (basically). Gilbert Wiles had a change of clothes in his car and he turned his back to allow Natalie to change back into her formal clothes. Natalie's formal clothes consisted of a white t-shirt with a black bra visible underneath, black sweatpants, and flip-flops that were as blue as the sky. Gilbert's clothing was simple: A suit and tie with a Rolex on his right hand (which indicates that he is left-handed).

_I'm ambidextrous._

On the seventh floor of the office building, Natalie looked out a wide rectangular window and gazed down below. The ground wasn't so far from her when she thought about it and she didn't understand how people could have a fear of heights. _Besides, it's not the fall that kills you._

"In here," Gilbert said as he slid in a keycard beside a door and punched in a four-digit code that beeped with every push. The lock was heard clocking and Gilbert opened the door and let Natalie walk in first like a gentleman. A lovestruck gentleman.

"This lab you gaze upon, AIM works here."

"The lab?" Four walls spread out evenly, about eight different tables in the room placed side by side to create a large square and each table had some kind of mechanical instruments on them. Natalie spotted on that looked to be a microscope, she spotted a remote controller to an R/C toy car, and even a computer with a cracked screen. She was more focused on the table that had a computer but one that was turned on.

"See anything you like?"

Natalie would've nodded except she went straight to the computer and pulled out something from her back pocket.

Gilbert stepped up beside her and realized that she was turning on the computer. He remembers protocol on how nobody is allowed to use a computer without authorization. He wanted to say something but stopped himself when he realized that all computers were locked and the only people who had the codes to unlock them were employees of AIM.

Natalie was able to do the opposite, however. When the password screen came up, she typed in a cryptic sentence and the computer turned on and took her to the homepage. Gilbert looks shocked like someone had done a magic card trick in front of him.

"How did you do that?" He stepped in closer to see Natalie pull up a screen with the name Monica Rappaccini. "This is Monica's computer," he panicked. "This is her computer!"

Natalie clocks on the 'Delete All' key and erases everything on Monica Rappaccini. Then she took out the flash drive and put it in her back pocket. When she turned around, Gilbert Wiles grabbed Natalie by the throat like he was trying to squeeze a balloon. He slammed Natalie's back on the table and placed his face in front of hers. "What have you done to Rappaccini's file? What have you done to Rappaccini?!"

Natalie spits in his face, which causes him to sneer like a dog getting ready to attack another dog. "What did you do? How did you hack into the AIM system?"

Natalie chuckled. She placed her hands on Gilbert's hands but added no pressure to her grip. She put on her seductive Russian accent and closed her eyes with a sigh. "You are supposed to be smart, Wiles, but how can you not figure this out?" She opens her eyes and looks up at him. "You really think it was difficult to seduce a fat wad like yourself? You are such a disappointment. Our CEO would've been disappointed in you for falling for such an ugly woman." Then she cocks her head like she saw the 'okay' side of the argument. "But then again, you are lucky that it wasn't a government agent who hacked to this computer."

Before Gilbert could figure this out, or he decided not to try and solve this riddle, he hauled Natalie off to one of the windows closest to him. He wraps his inner elbow around Natalie's neck as he unlocks the window.

As the window unlocks, he is suddenly launched down to the ground by a force sent to his chest.

A boot was kicked through the glass before an entire body flew right through the window and this person landed on his knees.

Tony Masters looks up and sighs heavily through his skull mask. He stands up and removes the grappling hook wrapped around his waist.

Natalie and Gilbert laid down on the floor with a puddle of glass surrounding them. Gilbert sees the masked man coming for him and starts to crawl away but Tony stomps on his left knee bone. Gilbert yells in pain before Natalie punches him in the kaw and his head hits the side of one of the tables.

"Took you long enough," Natalie said. She picked herself up and dusted the glass off her white shirt. "You could've been a little more dramatic in your entrance."

"I don't go drama," Tony deadpanned. "I go for the 'Final Cut'." He pulls out a knife as if to demonstrate his point. Both eyes turn towards the dazed Gilbert. Natalie smirks and crouches down to one photo before she wraps her hands around Gilbert's throat and gives him a dose of his treatment.

Gilbert tries to throw a punch but Natalie blocks it with her arms. "Don't struggle, you'll just delay this experiment by a few seconds."

Tony stomps on Gilbert's chest and pins him there.

"You bitch," he cursed at Natalie and Tony. "I hope you rot in hell for this."

"We're not going to hell, we're going to bring Hell here."

* * *

Before he could say anything else, the door was kicked open and entered four men with pistols. Tony 'Taskmaster' Masters was already on the case. He grabbed a chair and swung at the first guard with it and disabled her. He swung it to the next one and added a punch in the mix. Before the third soldier could fire, he grabbed his arm with the gun in and redirected the line of fire to the fourth guard.

Instead of outright killing the third guard, he looked into the guard's eyes and widened them. He then spoke in a soft voice and put a hand on the back of his head. "Spare me the trouble… and kill yourself." He looks over at the broken window he created. "Cut your throat and then jump out of the window."

And the guard obeyed like he was in a trance. He leaned over the window and cut his throat across the glass. Without even groaning in pain, he leaps out and falls to his death.

"That was beautiful," Taskmaster said.

Gilbert's shocked eyes looked like he had seen someone who ripped off their face.

Natalie sighs heavily like she had difficulty breathing. She licked her lips and cracked open her face with a smile. "What's the matter, Gilbert, you look like you've just seen a ghost." The smirk on her face is still present as she takes out the flash drive and holds it up to her eye level. "Well, I technically, am a ghost."

Taskmaster whipped out a hand-sized canister from his holster and shoved it deep into Gilbert's mouth up to the pin. Gilbert chokes and tries spitting it out but he feels something stick in the back of his neck that paralyzes him. It felt like an acupuncture needle was in his nape.

"Thanks for your contribution."

Taskmaster wraps one end of the rope to the pin so that the pin would be pulled once he walks a certain distance.

"Shall we," Natalie holds out her hand. Tony wraps the grappling hook around Natalie's hand, wrapping it like he was making a noose.

Casually, Natalie and Taskmaster walk back towards the shattered window and leap out in a nosedive.

The rope yanks the pin from Gilbert's mouth. GIlbert's eyes widen and his heart stops as he waits for the boom. There was no boom, but there was smoke blowing out of the cannister like a cigarette.


	2. I Can Do Better

_Washington D.C - February 2017_

_Natasha Romanoff woke up with a yawn and felt a pinch on her inner elbow. When she opened an eye, she saw a mosquito draining blood from her dominant vein. With a smack of her hand, she crushes it and sighs. She pulls herself out of bed slowly before moving over to the treadmill and does a run for about five minutes, barely breaking a sweat in the process. When she finished, she grabbed her clothes and took a shower in her bathroom. She winces in pain as the hot water burns her wound from six years ago._

_Natasha Romanoff looked up at herself in the mirror as she got dressed in her clothes for the day. A pair of black jeans and a white T-shirt were good enough for her. She gets her hair done and puts on makeup. She lifts her shirt and sees a stitch from her wound on her side come off. She uses a paper towel to soak up the blood before fixing the stitch herself. It's been six years since she was stabbed in the side and her wound still refused to heal itself and cause her pain. That hurt, she thought._

_Natasha Romanoff went into the kitchen and cut open a bag of Canadian ham, cracked open an egg, and cooked both on two different pans on the stove. She brewed herself ground coffee and added artificial sweetener and four spoonfuls of creamer. Once she is done with the cooking, she sits down at the table, takes a sip of her coffee, dabs Tabasco sauce on her eggs, sunny-side-up eggs, and uses a fork to pick up the cooked ham and take a bite out of it. She made herself a chocolate protein shake before she moved on with her schedule._

_Natasha Romanoff went into her closet to put on her real clothes for work. She pulled out a vest and her boots. She double knots her boots, puts her bulletproof vest on, then reaches under her bed to pull out a box. Inside the box were three pistols. She grabs the Makarov PM pistol and puts it in her boot. She takes the Walther PPK and picks it in a holster behind her back. She pulls out her real weapon of choice, the Glock 26 pistol and smiles to herself as she puts it in the holster of her hip._

_Natasha Romanoff puts a flannel over her bulletproof vest before taking out parts of her Colt M4A1 and walking out of her apartment building. As she walks down the steps, a neighbor waves to her and she waves back. When she got to the bottom, a police car with her half-twin brother was inside. He calls out for her and she sits down in the passenger seat. As the police car drives off, she looks out the window, stares out into the city of Washington D.C. and smiles warmly._

_She looks at her brother and says, "Hey, little brother." _

* * *

_Freedom is what America is known for. You can pick your religion, type of government, who you can marry, who you can have unprotected sex with, pretty much anything. It also leaves you free to do things that others would not like. Like robbing, stealing, murdering, or even something as simple as...watching SpongeBob SquarePants with your only niece while your brother is on his long-overdue honeymoon with his wife._

Natasha Romanoff was laying on her side on the leather couch with one arm placed under her head as she watches an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants with her niece, Jeanne. Jeanne sits on the floor in front of the couch and stares intently at the television like she was hypnotized.

_What is the point of this show? How does a sea sponge talk? Is it a sea sponge or a kitchen sponge? It is so confusing. But whatever floats Jeanne's boat… and sinks mine._

Nat was half-asleep and closed her eyes. She gets only several seconds of darkness before Jeanne tugs her on the arm like she was pulling down a vine. "What is it?" she groans.

"It's almost four o'clock," she said eagerly with a smile.

Nat rubbed the sleep out of her eyes before sitting up. She reached for the remote and muted the tv. "What happens at that hour?"

"Usually Mom starts cooking dinner."

"At four o'clock in the afternoon?"

"It's Thursday and we always have Spaghetti and Meatball for dinner on Thursdays."

_Spaghetti and Meatballs. Grab yourself a pot with spaghetti noodles and meatballs and pour a little sauce on top and everybody starts calling you Chef Boyardee. Sounds French when you say it aloud. That or I've been so accustomed to his foods that I think that his name sounds like food._

"Alrighty then," Nat said and clapped her hands. She picks up her niece and carries her to the kitchen. "Operation: Chef Boyardee is a go."

"Can I be your assistant?"

Nat offered her a warm smile that non-verbally said 'anything for you, princess'. Verbally, she said, "How can I say 'no' to my only niece?"_ By shaking my head no for one._

Nat got out a pan and Jeanne got out the noodles and sauce. Nat started cooking Spaghetti and Meatballs and served two bowls at the kitchen table. The kitchen table was made of wood and looked like something out of a Medieval castle. Her brother sure had a fine taste in old things. Nat picked up her fork and ate some noodles before she turned an eye over to her niece.

He sensed something was wrong with Jeanne because she wasn't making any usual twirls with her fork. So she improvised.

Nat twirled the noodles around her fork. She raised it above her head. "I'm Tom from _Tom and Jerry_," she said in a voice that she thought sounded like a talking cat but just sounded like her voice but deeper. "And I love spaghetti because it reminds me of the hairballs I used to cough up." And almost gagged on the 'hairball' when she went to eat it. She thought her niece would be laughing but was disappointed to hear silence from her. That's when she put her fork down and became more direct. "What's wrong, honey?"

"I just wish Mommy and Daddy were here," she sighed and twirled the noodles in a depressed manner. "They're missing Family Spaghetti Night."

Nat made a frowny face and patted her niece on the back. She manages to make her niece smile a little but it wasn't enough to be a smile of happiness. Just nonchalance. "I understand that you miss them but I promise that your mother and father miss you just as much."

"Then why did they leave for Hawaii? Why can't they just go somewhere closer?"

_How am I going to explain this to a five-year-old child? Her parents, my brother, and sister-in-law went on a honeymoon that was stolen from them when my brother impregnated my sister-in-law a month before the wedding. Now I'm the one who has to 'wrap' these things up._

"Well," she hesitated. She thought back in her mind and put herself in the shoes of a five-year-old. She grew up with one mother and no father. Her father, Ivan, was something of a man-whore that forced her biological mother to remove Nat and her twin brother from her womb. What Nat learned from her surrogate mother was that Ivan had many partners but never wanted any children. Such a man-whore he is and he expects his lovers to get rid of his children. Hell, Nat could have a thousand brothers and sisters and not know it.

She put herself back into the mind of when she was five and tried to emphasize with Jeanne. She couldn't remember that far back. She wasn't focused on little girl things like Spongebob (_Possibly because it didn't exist when I was five..._) or playing with Barbie dolls (_Did they have those back then? What the crap_). She decided to just speak the way she felt was necessary and hope that Jeanne wouldn't cry.

"You know that when a man and a woman get married?"

"Yeah," Jeanne said.

"And they want to spend a couple of days on vacation afterward?"

"Yeah?"

_So far, so good._ "Well, that is what your mother and father are doing right now. They are celebrating the vacation that comes after their marriage."

"But they've been married since I was born."

"True, but," she hesitated to explain this next part. If she didn't say it correctly, then Jeanne would be asking about where babies come from. She could just outright say the answer with three letters but she wasn't that heartless. As far as Jeanne knew, she was the greatest aunt in the world who wouldn't even hurt a fly.

_Gotta cover up the KILLER assassin part of my life until she gets older. An excommunicated killer assassin._

"Well, there was a problem." _You were conceived when Tony wasn't wearing a condom one month before their wedding so you ruined everything. That's just cynical._ "They realized that they couldn't have a honeymoon because they were expecting somebody."

"Who?"

The curious tilt made Nat's heart flutter in her chest. "You. They were expecting you." Jeanne's face lit up like she was told where babies come from.

_Why can't parents just say from their stomach, come on? Just don't mention the part where they insert 'foreign objects' into...you get the idea._

"So I ruined their vacation?" Jeanne looked down with a lip. With her crying lip, she could practically be a coat hanger.

"No," Nat said and pushed a strand of her hair out of her face. "You didn't ruin anything. They chose this. They wanted to be with their first daughter rather than to be somewhere luxurious." _It sure saved them money and even gave them a head start to plan five years later._ "They just decided that today was the best day to go back. They might even bring you back a present for you. Who knows."

"Are you sure I didn't ruin anything?"

Nat nods and rubs the top of her hair and messes her style up. "Of course I'm sure. When has Aunty Natty been wrong before."

Jeanne's eyes lit up like a dog perking up his ears. "Oh, I can think of seven times you've been wrong."

"Really? When?"

"You were wrong about tomatoes being a vegetable, Pluto being a planet, Dora the Explorer being Go Diego Go's brother…"

_Damn photographic memory she inherited from her father. _"Let's just stop," Nat ordered, "Before I eat your Spaghetti and Meatballs."

Jeanne laughed before digging into her food.

_Was I wrong about Dora the Explorer being Go Diego Go's brother? Maybe I've been spending too much time with my complicated twin brother._

After dinner was finished, it was time for Jeanne's favorite meal of the day: Dessert. Nat combed through the freezer and pantry to look for some kind of dessert but found nothing. She asked Jeanne what she wanted and she said ice cream. That's when a lightbulb went off in Nat's head. "I'm going to take you to Baskin Robbins for ice cream." She grabbed her keys and drove her niece to Baskin Robbins.

After arriving at Baskin Robbins only half a mile away, Nat and Jeanne ordered two scooped ice cream cones which they ate while they were still inside. Even though it was in the middle of the month, at still brought a snow jacket for her niece just in case because ice cream shops typically need cold temperatures for the ice cream. She wasn't complaining as she licked her chocolate fudge ice cream cone. Neither was Jeanne with her cookie dough cone

"Aunty Natty," Jeane said as she licked from her ice cream cone and got some on her lips.

"What's up, sweetie," Nat responded. She saw the mess upon Jeanne's face and tried to suppress a laugh but it was like trying to prevent yourself from breathing in. She let out a little snicker but covered her mouth with her hand.

"I think that today was a fun day."

"You 'think' today was a fun day? You got to hang out with Aunty Natty for the whole day and I get to take care of you for the rest of the week. We still have six more days of Funtime."

"Can we go to the festival coming up?"

"We'll see."

Jeanne chuckled before she tasted ice cream on her lips. That's when she realized why her aunt was laughing and licked at the ice cream.

Nat couldn't help herself and chuckle. She pulls out a napkin from beside her and wipes Jeanne's face. "Let me get that for you."

"Thanks, Aunty."

"What are aunts for?" _Hanging out with their nieces, that's what aunts are for._

"What are we doing tomorrow, Aunty Natty?"

That question caught Nat off guard. She tried to think of an answer but her mind drew a blank. It wasn't because she was cynical like the treacherous Red Room trained her to be, she just didn't plan. This Baskin Robbins thing was improvised because there was no dessert at home. It's fine. If she can improvise this and make a five-year-old happy with frozen sugar that's going to give them diabetes in the future, she can improvise with something tomorrow. "Why don't we figure that out when we can, alright?"

"Okay."

The two of them went back to silence for a while before they finished their ice cream cones. Jeanne had made a bet with her aunt that she could finish her ice cream cone faster and put her aunty in her place.

"You cheated," Nat pouted, "You used your ice cream eating superpowers on me."

"I win! Can I get another ice cream?"

Nat laughed. "I think one is enough for tonight."

"But Daddy always lets me have seconds."

"Really?" _I know my brother, he never goes for seconds. That's why Jeanne is an only child and Tony has no wifey in mind after a divorce. But I'm not Tony and I want to be the cool aunt for tonight._ "If it's okay with you dad, then we can get one more. But only one." She finishes her ice cream cone and takes her niece up to the counter to order seconds.

The worker who served them was a pale woman with dark silky hair and she had a stereo on her hip that looked like it came from the 1980s. Her name tag read 'Rose'.

"Hello," Rose said nervously. Nat noticed that when the worker spoke to her, she would switch channels like she was playing the guitar with it. And the worker was staring intently at Nat with an eccentric smile. _No ice cream worker is THAT happy to work in an all-cold place when spring is coming up._ "How can I help you?"

_She's like a fangirl in front of her idol. I'm no one's idol._ "We just came here for seconds. My niece beat me in a bet so we have to get seconds." Her eyes go back to the radio, hands fidgeting on the knobs. She looked up to Rose's ears and saw headphones in. "Bad for business to listen to music while working on the job."

Nat drove her home and they finished their ice cream once they got home. They stayed up for a few more hours to watch more episodes of that wretched talking square sponge before the bell tolls for nine o'clock. Nine o'clock meant bedtime.

Nat waited for Jeanne to change into her pajamas before she tucked her little niece in the bed and told her a bedtime story. Jeanne's eyes were half-open by the time Nat finished the story and she took this as a sign to say goodnight. She kissed her on the forehead and made way for the door. Jeanne sat up and whimpered in fear. She pulled the sheets up to her face and stared intently at the closet.

"What's going on?" Nat asked.

"There's a monster in the closet."

Nat looks at the closet door. The pink closet door with flower stickers on it. Just like Boo's door from _Monsters,_ _Inc_.

"There are no monsters in the closet. It's just your imagination." She walks over to the closet door and slides it open to reveal an empty closet with a dozen shirts in Jeanne's size hanging up. "I know it can be scary to be sleeping all by yourself without Dad around. But I'm here." She moves over to her niece's bed and crouches down. She kisses her on the forehead again. "You're a big girl. There are no monsters in the closet to scare you and even if there were, your Aunty Natty will fight them off."

Jeanne was calmed down slightly out the blanket was still covering everything except her nose up. Nat nodded.

"If it makes you feel better, how about I stay in here until you fall asleep?"

Jeane nodded.

"Then it's settled. No mummies in the closet this time." (A reference to _Monster Squad_) Nat climbed into Jeanne's bed and was careful not to crush her with her weight. No, she didn't weigh _that_ much. She laid herself down and her head shared half the pillow with Jeanne. "Goodnight my niece."

"Goodnight Aunty Natty," Jeanne said back after putting the blankets down and turning over. "Aunty Natty? How can we go to sleep if the lights are still on."

"Ah, shiiiii-take."


	3. The Goodness of Your Heart

Morning came almost twelve hours later. Natasha Romanoff woke up almost twelve hours later. She sits up and realizes that the bed she was laying in was soft and it takes her only a moment to realize that she fell asleep in her niece's bed yet her niece was gone. She figured she was already in the living room and watching that unbearable talking sponge boy show again. She looked at the blinds and saw linear lines of light shine through them. She takes a moment to familiarize herself with her surroundings before she gets out of bed and heads into the kitchen.

She would be lying if she said she wasn't amazed by what she saw next. Amazed and horrified.

Jeanne was cooking scrambled eggs on the grill and she was doing it like a chef. An experienced chef. An experienced chef who was also like a midget. She was scrambling eggs into a pan and she was using a stool to reach the counter's height. Aside from amazed and horror, Nat didn't know what else to feel about her niece just grabbing a pan and cooking. Maybe she should be proud of her.

"What are you doing?" It was a stupid question to ask because she already knew the answer.

"I'm making you breakfast," Jeanne said happily and didn't even miss a beat as she stirred.

Nat came up to Jeanne and held the pan for her niece. "Can I be your assistant chef?"

Jeanne remembered how she asked to be Nat's assistant chef last night to make Chef Boyardee noodles and meatballs now she was the sous chef.

_A boy named Sue...chef._

"I learned from my daddy," she said as she stirred. When the eggs started to bubble from the heat, Nat returned the pan to the stove. She pulled out plates and let Jeanne finish up. When Jeanne reached over and almost touched the pan with her skin on her right arm, Nat quickly grabbed her and prevented her from burning herself.

"Thank you," Jeanne said.

"No problem." _She takes after her father._

Because of Tony Master's 'superhuman' ability to copy the actions of any person, also called Photographic Reflexes, it was passed down through genetics and into Jeanne. She was a small version of her brother. Except cuter and she loved spending time with her niece. Except when it came to watching SquareBob SpongePants.

"Who were you making breakfast for?" It should be a simple question to ask because there were only three choices: Jeanne, Nat, or both. She was hoping for Option C.

"Both of us."

_Yes._ "Thank you for being so thoughtful to your aunt."

"No problem. Daddy says that because you exercise yourself in doing ironically mundane stuff, you need a break."

"What does your father mean by ironically mundane?"

"I don't know. I'm a human being, not a dictionary."

Nat laughed. She had Jeanne fill her paper plate with scrambled eggs before she did the same to herself. While the pan was still on, Nat had an idea. "Check this out." She grabs the pan and pours pancake batter from the counter. She waits a few minutes before she picks up the pan and shakes it around before flipped the pancake batter. "You have to be a professional to do something like that."

"I'm a professional." She took the pan and also flipped the pancake batter. "See?"

"You're a copycat."

Nat took both plates to the table and the two of them ate in solemn silence for a while. Nat had to admit that she liked the scrambled eggs and pancake breakfast that she was eating. It reminded her of when she cooked for her mother when she was still asleep. Of course, she was yelled at but they still ate the food anyway.

"What are we doing today, Aunty Natty?"

Nat gulped coffee from her mug before she spoke. "I think we'll be spending the time outside today."

"Are we going to the festival on Valentine's Day?"

"Your father told me that you need some new clothes for school."

"I don't need clothes, it's better to recycle what you already have."

"Don't you want to look nice?"

"For who? I don't have a crush on any boys."

"I mean for yourself." She cracked a smile before she explained herself. "You want to know the one thing that guys never understand about girls?"

"What?"

"Guys think that girls have to dress up to look nice for them. If it were up to me, I would wear the ugliest sweater I could find, the dirtiest pair of jeans in the mud, and rub lipstick all over my face just to scare away the sensitive people."

"That sounds pretty atrocious when you say it, Aunty Natty."

_She's a human being, not a dictionary my foot._ "But, when we go shopping for clothes, we do so for ourselves. We want to look good for ourselves. It's called pride. You want to have pride in yourself. If you let a boy pick out your clothes for you, you never get to express your personality because your clothes tell a lot about you. I'm always wearing a black jacket that is the color black because it symbolizes a mystery, quiet, gothic sort of thing. You get what I'm saying?"

Jeanne had the expression of a fish who just realized that he was out of water. Her jaw hangs loose, wide enough for a hook to dig into her mouth. "Kinda."

Nat could tell she was replaying the entire conversation in her head just by her fish face look. "I'll try to explain it in simpler terms: Dress for best, not for less."

Jeanne's fish face remained but her mouth closed a bit. "I think I get it now. Dress for best so the guys look like less."

_Not the point I was trying to make per se but feminine power. Go, women!_ "Okay, so you at least understand what I'm trying to say."

"Yes, I want to go shopping right now. Daddy never took me shopping because he is a boy and boys don't like shopping for clothes."

_Five-year-olds, so quick to judge but that is spot-on._ "I'm not your dad. We'll pick out nice clothes for the two of us. We'll even get shirts that say 'Thing 1' and 'Thing 2.'"

"Can I be Thing 1?"

_I would say yet but as long as I'm around, you'll always be second best._ "Why not?"

* * *

Nat drove Jeanne to the mall and they headed into the store, Ross. If any stores were reliable for clothing, then Ross was the store.

_I usually go to Amazon for shopping like this but Ross is a-okay for second place. Whenever I think of Ross, I think of that general who perished with his daughter a couple of years ago._

Nat was mostly acting as a bodyguard to Jeanne because Jeanne was dragging Nat around the store by her hand and Nat couldn't resist. She felt like if she tried to resist, then she would pull her niece's arm out of her sockets.

_No way am I going to be remembered as the first aunt to pull her niece out of place. Watch 'The Ring' if you want to see body parts out of place._

As Jeanne takes Nat to the shoe section, she sits down on one of the benches with the mirror attached on at the bottom. She watches Jeanne sit down on the tile floor and take off her sketchers to try on a pair of black boots. Her black boots did not match her jean jacket and red sweat pants. Was she going to complain? No, because if she did want anything, she wouldn't be ponying up the dough.

_Aunt Never-Say-Never Natty was going to pay._

Nat sighs in boredom and rested her elbows on her knees. She bends forward and closed her eyes for a brief second before looking up. She feels a tingle in the back of her neck and turns to her left where her spider senses were tingling. She spotted a man with a blue cart roaming through the men's aisle. His back was to her but she could've sworn this man looked familiar. Nat stands up to get a better view and sees the man's outfit. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt with blue jeans and khaki boots. His hair was short, curly, and a light brown color.

He pulled up into the shoe aisle with his front to her and Nat instantly recognized the man. "FitzSimmons," she whispered under her breath.

Leo Fitz, an agent of the Red Room when it was still active, was not a fighter like Nat Romanoff but a genius-level scientist with all sorts of talents in numerous scientific fields and technology. Ever since he left the Red Room three years ago with his newly wedded wife, Jemma Simmons, he became a recognized civil and mechanical engineer, as well as a Nobel award-winning biochemist. Even a gifted biochemist like Miles Warren praised him for his work.

The last she heard of Jemma Simmons, aside from her having pretty much the same level intellect as her counterpart, she heard that Jemma became a financial manager for an organization of highly intelligent people called Intelligencia. She quickly got another job when all the members of Intelligencia were arrested for conspiracy. Jemma Simmons's name was known to the public when she became one of the founding members of Cross Tech Enterprises, a company that practiced primarily in the field of applied physics. Cross Tech Enterprises, or CTE as it is commonly called, was supported by the government and the US military for their work in making prosthetic limbs for amputees and even managed to expand the corporation to San Francisco from D.C.

"Leo Fitz," Nat said to Fitz as he pushed the cart closer. He was grabbed by her calling of his name and sh could tell by the confused look on his face that he was confused. She opened her mouth to speak but he interrupted her. _How rude to interrupt me._

"Natasha Romanoff," Fitz said like he had to sound out every syllable with his tongue. "It has been too long since I've seen you. I can't believe that we're both in Washington D.C. right now."

Nat nods. "Not unbelievable, maybe just of a coincidence." She looked around like she was playing a game of _Where's Waldo_ and she was in the book. "Where's Jemma? Last I heard you two were married."

"She's in the bathroom. Where's Tony?"

"On a honeymoon with his wife."

"Aww, he finally got to go on his honeymoon with Mercedes."

Nat's eyebrows come down like she was stumped by a question. She was stumped by how Fitz's knew of Mercedes's existence. _He better not be a stalker, I just bought a new computer and I don't want to smash it._

"Word travels fast around the Red Room." It was like he read her mind.

Nat shrugged before she turned back to Jeanne as she finally put on the second boot. "Jeanne, this is Leo Fitz."

Jeanne tilted her head and asked, "Who is Leo Fitz?"

"He used to work with me in the Red Room." _Yes, my niece knows about me being a Red Room assassin, not of my high kill count._

"Is this your daughter?" Fitz asked. It was obvious that while he knew of Tony 'Taskmaster' Masters being married and going on a honeymoon, he appeared to be unaware of the fact that Jeanne was Tony's and not hers. She wasn't upset, Jeanne did have reddish-brown hair inherited from her father. _No harm in that, I guess_.

Fitz picked up on the lack of resemblance between Jeanne and Nat and deduced whose child she was. "She's Tony's daughter. I didn't know that."

"I thought word spread like a virus around the Red Room."

"Tony mentioned nothing about a daughter."

"And I never wrote in any of my reports that Tony had a daughter," Nat said firmly. "If there is one thing we have a right to keep secret from the Red Room, it's Tony's daughter; my niece."

"I understand," he said. "The Red Room disbanded some time ago. Some interference from a 'rogue agent and her twin brother' caused the whole organization to shut down." He arched his eyebrows at Nat but he couldn't resist the smile that spread across his face. His smile was so small that you had to pay attention or else you would miss it. "I'm grateful and my wife is grateful for what this rogue agent and her twin brother did."

Nat sighed quietly before her lips curved into a smile as she sat back down. One year and one month ago, she found out through an epic and eye-opening experience that there are Red Room agents are there who use what they have learned for personal gain. They mask their motives in Red Room assignments but once the mask is off, they reveal themselves to be cynical. Most of the people in the Red Room were trained since birth to be ruthless killers except for herself, her brother, and FitzSimmons. She believes that because the Red Room never took her in as an infant, it saved her from becoming a ruthless person. She was grateful for everything that happened to her.s he was grateful for her mother for teaching her right from wrong and she was grateful that her father, whom she theorized was a Red Room agent himself, ordered her mother to eject her unborn children from her womb and put them through the in-vitro fertilization process. 'Sides, it wasn't hard to take down the Red Room. All was needed was one bullet for the elderly woman in charge and a ledger with no red in it.

Jeanne came to sit down on nat's lap and showed her her new shoes. It was moments like these that made Nat never regret the decision she made. Had she not disbanded the Red Room, she never would've been the cool Aunty Natty.

_Man, life is pretty damn good._

* * *

**AN: For all you _Dexter_ fans, I published a spin-off to the _Dexter_ show called _Mysterious Murderous Michael_. If you're interested, check it out.**


	4. Steps In The Right Direction

After Jeanne had worked up a friendly conversation with Fitz, that is when the other half of Fitz's came into the picture. Jemma Simmons looked just like Nat Romanoff remembered her: Short, dirty blonde hair, and fair skin with a smile that only a geek could achieve. From there, it was a four-way conversation between friends.

After they finished shopping and Jeanne had bought those black boots (with Nat's money) and a few other shirts and pants to go along, the four of them decided that since they were meeting up by coincidence, then they should have lunch together.

_What happened to the good old days where I could make food instead of spending half of week's salary on fast food and ice cream? I'm asking for a raise when I get back to work._

'Subway, Eat Fresh' as they always said and they certainly did eat fresh. In the food court, there were about a dozen or so food stores each with a line stretching as far as at least twelve people and that was the average. They decided on Subway when they figured if they couldn't decide on what restaurant, then they could at least decide on their food and the bill would be the same. This time, the check would be split three ways.

_Jeanne's so lucky she doesn't have to pay for anything, or all the candy in the world would be gone. Then I would have to pay money for the hospital room, the operation to get her out of a food coma, pay for her hospital food, hell I might have to pay just for walking in the hospital myself. But today, I'll spend time with my niece._

"Thank you," Nat said to the cashier as she was handed her foot-long sandwich and paid with Fitz, Simmons, and her own money. She took her foot-long back to the table that Jeanne picked out. It was in between two flower pots standing on pedestals with about six or seven pieces of gum stuck under the tables and each one was a different color. Nat and Jeanne sat together with their friends sitting opposite of them, the table barely big enough for the four friends to even put their elbows up.

Nat unwrapped her sandwich and felt aroused upon smelling the meat radiating off the bread. Her sandwich consisted of fried chicken breast with tomatoes, lettuce, onions, ranch, and hot sauce. Jeanne got a simple meatball sub. She could not tell what Fitz and Simmons got on their sandwiches but there were about three layers of food consisting of meat and lettuce.

"Can we get drinks, Aunty Natty?" Jeanne pulled her 'please' look that made her look like a dog. A dog with a cute face a lip sticking out. Nat wanted to say no but how could she when she was hypnotized by that adorable face. "I can go get drinks if you want. But no soda."

"Why not?"

"Soda is bad for you."

"What about root beer?"

"Root beer _is_ soda."

"What isn't soda?"

"Lemonade."

"Can I get the pink lemonade?"

"They have only regular lemonade."

"Why?"

"Because it is easier."

"Why?"

"Because there aren't many pink lemons."

"WHY?"

It was a circle of WHY and Nat was losing to a five-year-old. What a humiliation especially in front of two people she served with.

"If it's okay," Fitz said. "I can go get drinks. I'll get her a lemonade."

"A pink one!" Jeanne said.

"There aren't any pink ones," Nat said again. She was ready to have a backup answer but her prediction of Jeanne asking why failed to come true.

"I'll just have a regular lemonade then."

"Okay," Fitz said as if he was writing this down. He turned to his wife. "What do you want?"

"What Jeanne is having."

"So lemonades for all?"

Nat nodded when Fitz's gaze came upon her.

Fitz nodded and went to go pay for the drinks.

There was an empty spot beside Simmons and it was like some kind of awkward energy was arising from that empty spot because she was shifting in her seat like there was a tac underneath her rear.

"So," Simmons said. "I heard that you got a promising job as a SWAT officer, am I correct?"

"You are." Nat took a bite of her sandwich and moaned at the taste like she was in love with it. If she had a boyfriend, then she would be cheating on him with this sandwich. "It's my week off and Tony's on his honeymoon with his wife. I'm watching Jeanne."

"I need a break from CTE," she said. "Taking on such a large corporation is a big responsibility. I think I fainted once or twice from stress. Or at least I _think_ I fainted from stress. Sometimes it is hard to tell."

"Whatever pays the bills," Nat said like she was studying a paper and half-listening to her friend mumble about her problems. "You have any children of your own?"

"No," she said with a slight hint of disappointment. "Me and Leo are trying though."

"You'll make a great mother, Jemma."

"So would you!"

Nat put her sandwich down and laced her fingers in front of her after putting her elbows up. She swallowed her meal before she said, "I've always wanted kids. I've never found the right man because most of the men in my life want me for personal reasons or just because my body is attractive. It's insulting."

"At least you have your niece who could prepare you for the role of a mother."

Nat laughed. "She is a monster as she is already. If anything, she's like an anti-pregnancy tactic. If you don't want a baby of your own, then hang out with Jeanne and endure."

Jeanne could understand only a quarter of what her aunt said. She was mostly focused on her sandwich and heard something about anti-pregnancy and how she was a monster. Maybe she scared her aunt last night when they came home from Baskin Robbins. It made her smile sweet victory.

Fitz finally came back with four cups of lemonade and passed each one out. "So, what were we talking about?"

Simmons answered. "What Nat thinks of the concept of motherhood."

"Oh." He rubbed his chin inquisitively. "Jemma and I have been trying for parenthood for a while. We're keeping our fingers crossed."

"If I could cross my toes, I would. If I could cross my eyes, then I would."

_Technically, I can cross my eyes. But I need to see straight when I'm driving home so your endorsement can wait when I'm in a safe and 'sterile' environment._

"I haven't found the right guy," Nat said offhandedly. "I've always wanted children but could never find the right guy. Plus, my job as a Red Room assassin kinda hindered my life as someone who had plans to be a mother."

Fitz thought back to the Red Room before he asked while pointing at her, "Didn't you have a fiance, Alexei or something?"

Alexei, the name rings a bell to Natasha's ears. _A dead, broken, cracked, rusted, ear-tearing bell._ "I don't need Alexei. We were nine years ago."

"Nine years," Jemma gasped with mock surprise. "Has it been that long since you separated?"

"Just to let you know, it was not working out for the two fo us so we split and went our ways. Let's just leave it at that."

"I liked Alexei," Fitz inputted. "I always thought you and him were such a cute-"

"Can we not talk about Alexei, please?" Nat was turning a light shade of red. Very few moments in her life had she lashed out due to embarrassment. She left her fiance, or he left her depending on which story is told, and she moved on. She just wanted Alexei to be completely absent from her life.

_I hope he's having fun as a test pilot for FSB._

"We came here to have a good time, eating sandwiches that people make for you without judgment, let's just leave everything like it is."

And it seemed to work. To ensure that it did work, Nat attacked her sandwich with her ferocious teeth and tore the food out. If this sandwich was a living creature, this prey would be dead. If this sandwich was a Stegosaurus, then this Tyrannosaurus Red would've already snapped his neck and ate his carcass.

She was about halfway done with her foot-long before the next conversation started up and it was from Jeanne.

"Did you know that Aunty Natty saved the world last year?"

Fitz's sub sandwich was about three inches away from his mouth when he heard that sentence. "What?" Of course, he knew about Nat saving the world. She saved the world a couple of times. Twice to be exact. "I know what your aunt did. She's a superhero."

_I would be modest but not for my niece._ "I was just doing what any citizen of the United States would've done. _Okay, modesty is slipping back into the picture. Damn it._ "The real heroes are the ones who do that kind of stuff for a living." _Didn't I use to do something like that for a living? Except kill people involved in it? I'm still stirring about that incident in that warehouse a year ago. About two or three weeks after Operation Wide Widow was in full effect._

"She's a superhero and she has no superpowers," Fitz added.

"Just goes to show," Simmons then said. "That not all superheroes are super."

_Are they complimenting me? Do I deserve to be praised for what I did? All I did was stop global nuclear warfare from a deranged Black Widow agent. I'm not a superhero. At the very least, just a regular person who was in the right place at the right time._ She looked over to Jeanne's face and saw her wide smile. She had a few baby teeth in the front that made her look like a baby chipmunk with reddish-brown hair. _That's a cute smile, Jeanne._

"You guys are heroes too," Nat pointed to FitzSimmons. "Jemma is running a large corporation, and you are a biochemist who received praise from numerous scientists."

_And we all originated from a room that trained us to be cold-blooded killers. The Red Room deserved to be put down after Operation: White Widow last year._

"You're all superheroes," Jeanne said again.

"That we are," Nat agreed before the solemn silence returned and they finished their sub sandwiches.

Sadly, it was then time for them to leave. Both parties had gotten their shopping in for the day and home was the final destination. Nat and Jeanne followed FitzSimmons to their car which was parked beside theirs.

_What a coincidence_.

They got to say one final goodbye to FitzSimmons and hoped they got to meet again.

Nat drove Jeanne home. She was sitting in the backseat and playing with a few toy airplanes that they got from _Spencer's Gifts_.

Back inside the house, it was three o'clock in the afternoon and they already had lunch. Now it was relaxation time. All Nat wanted to do was just sit down and watch a movie with her niece. She wasn't lazy but found the idea of just sitting down and watching horror movies the ideal concept of family time.

_And unlike my niece, I like scary movies._

Nat kills time by turning on the TV and switches away from the talking sponge channel. She flips channels until she passes one and turns back to it. It was the news channel and there was a BOLO with Nat's face on it.

Her eyes widened as her heart sank to her stomach like a rock in quicksand. The police say that Natasha Romanoff and Tony Masters broke into AIM headquarters in North Carolina and gassed the place with a mysterious chemical that appeared to be harmless. The news report went on to report that Homeland Security was on top of this case and sending in professionals to detain Natasha Romanoff and Tony Masters.

_I didn't do anything wrong._

"Aunty Natty," Jeanne squealed as she came into the room and saw the television. She points to the television. "What's on the news?"

Nat put a hand to her heart and felt the pumping of adrenaline. "Me…"


	5. Take the Knife

A.I.M. Building

Charlotte, South Carolina

"So gentlemen, that's how it is," said Natalie Rushman in a formal voice. "If you say yes to this proposition, then everybody will be walking away with cash in their pockets numbering in at least three numbers and six zeroes. You say no, then I'm walking out that door with my dignity, which is a lot more valuable than a couple of hundred dollars ranking in the millions. Any objections should be said aloud for the board to hear and when speaking these objections, do not stutter because I hate stutters."

Natalie Rushman sat at the end of a conference table where eight other men in suits sat. They studied her as she explained her proposition: Fund her one hundred million dollars and in return, she will bring fame and fortune upon Advanced Idea Mechanics in a matter of weeks. A month at the very least. One hundred million dollars divided by eight men, each one should pitch in $12,500,000. If you ask Natalie, it sounds like a fair deal.

"You expect A.I.M. to just turn over one hundred million dollars to a woman with no past?" a fat man in a gray suit with a red tie spoke.

"Just how stupid do you think we are?" a thin man said.

Natalie Rushman had a smile across her face that looked like one a maniac was adept at achieving. She had a white button shirt and black skirt on as her outfit of choice. Her red hair was wavy and lips red of lip gloss. "I didn't call you stupid, you did." She let out a soft chuckle.

The thin man stood up and faced Natalie with his lips parted to show his teeth. "I think the eight of us can come to the unanimous answer of no."

Natalie Rushman's smile doesn't falter nor does her face shows signs of any emotion other than her forced smile.

Exhaling through her teeth, Natalie pushed herself out of her chair. "I don't want to be the bad guy here but I think one hundred million dollars will be more than enough to rocket A.I.M. up to the moon, even with the money they make now." She shrugs like a teenager who had brothers fighting in the other room and the mother asked what was going on. "I mean, it is most certainly your lost if you refuse to change your mind on this." She walked around the table with her right hand up to her stomach level. "This is indeed your last chance for A.I.M. and I suggest you choose wisely and you don't end up aging to death like that guy from _The Last Crusade_."

She stopped in front of the thin man and the only change in her smile was that her teeth were no longer showing. She still gave off a vibe to the thin man that he should make his choice carefully or suffer the consequences. He stood his ground.

"The unanimous offer from myself and all A.I.M. members of the board is no."

Natalie sighed in defeat before she holds out her hand. Her fingernails were sharp, long, and painted red. "I guess that since we've come to a bad deal, then I guess I better be on my way. But it was great doing business with you, Mr. Brannex."

The thin man - Or Alessandro Brannex - grabbed Natalie's hand.

Natalie gripped her hand tight around his before she used her other hand and pricked Brannex in the back of his hand with multiple needles. He winced and pulled his hand back, looking down to see the needles belonging to four syringes that had green ooze on the tips.

"Don't scream," Natalie said coldly, "You'll just hurt my ears. Die quietly."

Vein protrude on Brannex's face and blood was starting to flow out of his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. He twitched and convulsed but remained standing. He could do little as all the blood in his body drained through his orifices. He finally screamed at the top of his lungs but his screams sounded as dry as a well with no water.

"I think your mascara is running," Natalie rolls her eyes like an annoyed older sister. Natalie put the syringes down and watched Brannex's corpse drop to the ground like a falling statue after it froze up.

Natalie whistles the lyrics to Diana Ross's song, _Missing You_ but with a twist_:_ "Not missing you. Tell me why this freak burned."

"What have you done?" the fat board member exclaimed in horror as he jumped to his seat.

"He chose poorly." Natalie reaches into her blouse for something. The other board members jump to their feet in panic and were expecting a gun but discovered it to be a small gas mask made only for the mouth and nose area. "Hold your breath and die later or just breath it in." She puts on the gas mask.

Outside the doors was Taskmaster and he was grabbing a janitor by the throat and he just looked at him in the eyes. He inquisitively tilted his head before he looked around. He points to the janitor's closet. "Open the air vents then kill yourself."

The janitor obeyed in a hypnotized state.

From the air vents, clear smoke starts spreading in the room. Slowly descending from the ceiling and upon the seven board members in the room. The seven board members hold their breaths like they're in a contest. One of them coughs before falling down and into his chair. One by one, they dropped like flies.

"You...cruel…" the fat man gasped before he landed face-first on the table, eyes closing as he lets out his last breath.

Natalie breathes in through the gas mask like she was smelling a candle. "As a wise man once said, 'Reality is cruel. All of the naivete is going to be removed. Reality is always changing, and it is always unpredictable. All of the balance is going to be destroyed." She closes her eyes and imagines herself in a peaceful place before she opens them to the sound of the door being bashed open.

Taskmaster came walking into the room with a gas mask of his own. He stands upon the fat man and laughs.

"If only I could use sleeping gas like this at my nephew's birthday party," Taskmaster laughed and wheezed through his gas mask.

"They refused our offer. Looks like we're going to have to continue this work on our own. As a duo."

"Not surprised. I kinda liked it when it was just the two of us; we don't need hired guns and thugs to take care of a couple of pricks like this."

"Inject all of them as quickly as possible. None of them are destined to wake up."

"Why couldn't we just gas them with the chemicals?"

"Not time for Renovation Day. We need as many resources as possible."

"Can I just kill them by hypnotizing them myself?"

Natalie eyed Taskmaster curiously with a hint of suspicion. "Poison whoever you want with cyanide then you can force whoever you want to kill themselves."

* * *

Nat quickly locked the front and back door. She told Jeanne that she was free to eat whatever snacks she wanted while she locked up all the windows in the house. She then rushes to her phone and quickly turns it off, smashing the battery so it was untraceable. "I didn't poison any building," she told herself. "Someone who stole my face is framing me." She remembers another detail. "And my brother. The father of my niece."

Jeanne was sitting on the counter and eating from a pack of Oreos. "Do you want some, Aunty Natty?"

"Aunty Natty is busy right now." She heads into Tony's bedroom and pulls out his computer. It was password protected and she already knew the password. She does a few hacks before she can trace the signal to Tony's phone in Maui, Hawaii, not South Carolina as shown on TV.

"If it wasn't my brother, then who could it be?" She took the computer with her back to the living room and watched more of the news. "It must be somebody with a similar-looking mask." Tony 'Taskmaster' Masters was infamous for having worn all kinds of masks most of his life growing up and nobody, not even Nat, knows the reason behind this but he has been doing so as far back as the age of four. He was Kakashi Hatake from _Naruto_ except with a mask covering his entire face and not just his eye. She was also pretty sure that he possessed no superhuman powers aside from the genetic mutation in his brain that grants him photographic reflexes abilities but that technically is not a superpower.

"What's wrong, Aunty Natty?"

_Damn, my niece can always sense when I'm in distress and I dislike it._ "Nothing, just trying to see if any crazy fans are after your aunty." _I feel bad for lying to my niece but she doesn't need to know that Homeland Security is about to break open the door and ...wait a second._

She double-checked the news screen and it said that a manhunt for Natasha Romanoff, or Natalie Rushman, was taking place in the Southeastern United States, expanding from North Carolina to Florida.

"Holy shit," she cursed under her breath, "They think I'm in South Carolina. The most recent attack happened twelve hours ago so they think I'm in South Carolina." She put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. "Whoever framed me knows that I'm in Washington D.C. and they want to steer Homeland Security away."

"What's Homeland Security?" Jeanne asked.

Nat picked up her niece and told her to get her bag. "We're going to spend the night somewhere nicer than here." If someone was well-aware of Natasha Romanoff's identity and they knew where she lived, then there's a good chance that they knew about Jeanne and God forbid something should happen to her sweet niece. "Have you ever slept in a hotel?"

_It was a cliche but it was all I could think of._

"I've slept in a hotel before."

"What about a motel?"

"What's a motel?"

_The inexpensive version of a five-star hotel: The one-star hotel._ "It's like a hotel but it is closer to the ground and not as high." _But easily accessible. If someone is trying to frame me for a crime, I should probably stay somewhere where you don't have to check out. A hotel has too many cameras but a lot of rooms. A motel is small but easily accessible. Looks like I'm going to have to go off the grid._ "We're staying somewhere else besides a hotel or a motel."

"Where?"

"I don't know but I promise I'll find something."

"Will there be a pool there?"

_Say no and crush her dreams now or say yes and crush her dreams later?_ "Hopefully." _It's easy to mislead a five-year-old but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'll need a fake ID and a credit card if I'm going somewhere I need to check-in. I'll have to scope out the place first, get gas for my car depending on where I'm going, so much to do._ "I'll be right back, Jeanne. You pack up a suitcase because we might be staying for a few nights."

"What if Daddy comes home and we're not here?"

_Taskmaster, my complicated half-twin brother, how could I forget? I doubt he's heard the news of a woman named Natalie Rushman who looks identical to me. I don't need him to worry but I guess it would buy time._

Nat grabs the house phone and dials up Tony's number. He handed the phone to Jeanne when he heard a voice on the other end. "It's your father."

Jeanne took the phone. "Hi, Daddy."

"Hi, sweetie, how have you been?"

"Good, I'm missing you. How's mommy?"

"She can't get enough of paradise down here. Next time we're on vacation, we're going to bring you, would you like that?"

Jeanne nodded before answering the phone. "What are you doing, Daddy?"

"Relaxing by the pool with a coconut in hand, a plate with the biggest cheeseburger I've seen, a side of fruit salad and chili cheese fries. I even ordered a horizontal chair so I could do a sit-up every time I drink from the coconut."

"Aunty Natty is taking me to a pool."

"She is...last time I checked, we didn't have a pool."

"No, she's taking me to _a_ pool."

"What pool?"

Nat was back in Tony's bedroom and she punched a hole in the wall and pulled out a duffel bag. Inside the duffel bag was everything needed when someone was on the run. About eight thousand dollars in cash, eight passports, eight fake IDs, eight needles filled with M99, everything needed to start a new life. She pulls out the eight fake IDs and searches through them. One of them catches her eye and she reads the ID as:

Natalie Rushman.


	6. It Still Gets Me

This must be what it is like to be on the run from Homeland Security and someone with a holographic mask on copying your face to a T: Waiting in line for a taxi with a suitcase in one hand and a niece in the other hand. It was boring and pathetic that people had to wait for a taxi in Washington D.C. It's not New York, obviously.

_If people could put this much time and effort into waiting, then there wouldn't be fat people anymore. Hell, if I see a fat person, I might chase him down with my car just to give him an exercise. How funny would that actually be?_

Finally, a taxi arrived and Nat sat in the back with Jeanne.

"Where to?" questioned the driver?

"188th Street and Highway," Nat said. "And we're in a hurry." She looked out her window before she saw the look in the man's eyes through the rearview mirror. His eyes were focused on him like he was driving her to the police station.

_Holy hell, that better not become a reality._

"188th Street and Highway is coming up in just a few short moments."

Minutes passed on the road and traffic was bad. They could not speed up to sixty-five and there was a red light around every corner. It was almost like a divine sign telling Nat not to run. If Nat believed in God, which she doesn't, then she would say this is some sort of ironic comedy movie that she was in.

The taxi driver kept himself busy from the traffic by switching the radio to a football channel. Last time Nat checked, it wasn't football Sunday but people still tune in. At some football game with some team that Nat couldn't identify, the team with the ball had been stalling on the throw and constantly making false passes.

"Throw the ball!" The taxi driver hit the radio with his hat. "That's why you guys suck at drafting players for your team!" He found Nat staring at him in the rearview mirror. "You like football?"

"I do!" Jeanne said.

"I'm more of a ballet girl." _Hard to believe but I did do ballet._

"Kid, did you catch that Dallas game last Sunday?"

Jeanne looked at Nat like she had the answer and she knew she didn't. "Wasn't that the game where the referee thought that the head of a coin was tails?"

"Yes," the taxi driver nodded. "You can't call something like that football; it's a crime against football. I bet twenty grand for Dallas to win and they would've, now I have to work three shifts because of that bonehead. How can you mistake heads for tails?"

_Obviously this guy made a bet on that bonehead football game last Sunday. I think the game went into overtime and then came the coin toss, Dallas called tails and the coin landed on tails but the referee mistook it for heads. What kind of coin did he use; I need a coin like that._

The taxi driver pulled them up to the suburban neighborhood. He pulls up in front of a house with two stories and an American flag hanging up on the roof. The driveway was empty but the garage door was shut. A smart person would put their vehicle in the garage to make it difficult for carjackers to try and break-in. She knew this was a long shot but was willing to gamble for it.

Nat quickly got out with her niece and paid the taxi driver two hundred dollars since he has to work three shifts now. _I'm sure glad I'm not that bonehead referee._

"Have a good day, sir." Nat quickly rushed Jeanne to the front door. The taxi sped off. Nat knocked on the door and waited.

"I can't wait to see them."

"They'll be happy to see you too."

The door opened and stood FitzSimmons. They both beamed a smile on their faces.

"What a surprise," Fitz said. "What are you guys doing here?"

_Hiding, don't you watch the news?_ "We just needed a place to sleep. I mean, we have a termite infestation at our house and we needed to vacate while they cleaned it out." _The deception wasn't necessary but I needed to test them._ "You mind if we stay here for a couple of days."

"I've felt like I've already seen you at the mall," said Jemma.

"Get a grip, that was a few hours ago. We need to stay here for the night, can you please help us?"

"I guess we can," Simmons said. "You are like family to us, Nat. And Jeanne is your niece so she is family to us as well. Our house is yours."

"Thank you," Nat sighed. "You're very kind." _Now I have to update them on the news if I can trust them not to turn me in._

"And plus, I just love this little adorable one right here." Simmons kneeled down and hugged Jeanne tight.

_They just saw each other a few hours ago and they're hugging like they haven't seen each other in years?_

"We've always prepared for such occasions."

Nat arches a brow. "People with termite infestations come to you in the middle of the daytime and beg for shelter?"

"No," she said. "We have prepared for unexpected guests. We have a guest room upstairs big enough for both of you."

"How did you find us anyway?" Fitz finally asked?

"I'm Natasha Romanoff," Nat said with a smirk. "I AM _Mission_: _Impossible_."

The four of them shared a laugh before the two finally came inside. The house had a normal look and normal means they have no pictures hung up on the wall and no decorations. This could be explained as they just moved here and haven't decided where to put the pictures and there is no upcoming holiday so the decorations are unnecessary. Aside from that, it looked like any other house and when people walk into a new house, they feel a sense of wonder. Nat and Jeanne were feeling a sense of wonder.

"Is there anything, in particular, you want to eat?" Simmons asked from the kitchen. Jeanne answered ice cream. "I think it's too early for ice cream. But I do have pink lemonade."

Jeanne: "YAAY!"

_Looks like my niece finally got pink lemonade._

Fitz turned on the TV and switched to the news channel.

Nat gulped nervously, fearing that he would see her on Homeland Security's most wanted list but he hadn't reached the correct news station. She unconsciously twitched her fingers like she was rubbing oil. Before he could flip to the correct channel, she decides to be straight with him. "I'm wanted by Homeland Security."

Fitz snapped his head at her like a dog hearing another do barking.

"What?" Simmons moved from the kitchen and into the living room to listen to what Nat was telling her husband. She turned to Nat and glared at her like she killed her mother. "You care to explain?"

"The less you know, the better." _I don't need you guys getting caught in the crossfire with someone using a holographic mask of my face._ "All you need to know is I'm innocent."

"If you were wanted by Homeland Security and you are not telling us why then you are not innocent," Simmons pointed out. She turned and picked up the phone. "If you don't tell me what's going on, I will call the police."

"Don't do that, Jemma," Fitz begged. "This is Natasha Romanoff, we've known her since the Red Room. "What about Jeanne?" Right on cue, the little girl stood beside Nat and held her hand tightly. "How do you think she's gonna feel when the government takes her aunt away?"

"Jeanne is a little girl so she'll understand whatever her father tells her." She looked back at Nat and after punching in the 9-1-1 numbers, presses her thumb over the call button. "Tell me why you're wanted by Homeland Security or you'll be spending the rest of your life in jail."

"Because she's famous," Jeanne said and stepped in front of Nat like she was protecting her. "She's a superhero."

"Even superheroes are wanted by the government," Fitz said. "And we have a superhero in our house wanted by the US government agency who specializes in anti-terrorism."

"This is something bigger than all of us," Nat insisted. "It's better if you don't get involved."

"Don't tell us what to do." Simmons crossed her hands and tapped her foot impatiently. "Start explaining."

Nat tried to look for another way out. She could tell a lie. If someone knew who nat was on a personal degree to be able to steal her face and one of her false identities from one of her false IDs, then she was not going to risk two scientists and her only niece to get caught in the crossfire. She loves her niece too much to take that risk and FitzSimmons were too necessary to be put at risk. In her fifteen years serving in the Red Room, if someone was unnecessary to the operation, then she would not include them and only give them the information they needed to know. Otherwise, there wouldn't be rankings within the Red Room. But the more she thought of it, the more she realized how valuable this group could actually be to her. FitzSimmons weren't the best fighters but they were exceptionally intelligent. She doesn't know a lot of people who can name every element on the periodic table. Jeanne, she trusted them with FitzSimmons and if she wanted FitzSimmons to trust her, then she would have to fill them in. From now on, there were no level rankings within the Red Room.

_Besides, the Red Room is dead and gone. No need to dwell._

"Alright." She took a deep breath. "Someone that knows me by name and face stole my identity and one of my false identities and has been roaming around the Southeastern United States, poisoning people with some kind of seemingly-harmless gas and injecting them with unknown biological substances. I have a theory that whoever these people are, or at the very least, a person is, they are targeting A.I.M. labs in the Southeastern United States as a ruse to lure Homeland Security away from Washington D.C."

Fitzsimmons stare at Nat blankly. Jeanne understood about 3.5821% of that conversation. That was more than what she usually understood in adult conversations. But it was still confusing to her.

"What are you talking about?" Simmons spoke up. "Who framed you?"

"I don't know," Nat almost snapped. "They are using a holographic mask to physically impersonate me and they're framing me from chemical/biowarfare. I'm innocent, otherwise, I would've been in South Carolina poisoning that A.I.M. building."

"And what about Tony?" Fitz asked.

"He's safe, doesn't know about any of this and he is in Hawaii."

"Does he know that his daughter is on the run with you?"

"NO." _Hopefully not, I left the kitchen for about a few seconds when Jeanne was on the phone. My niece is adorable but she's got the biggest mouth in the world that she made Shamu jealous._ "This is under control."

"Someone who knows you enough to steal one of your fake identities is gassing people with bio bombs and leading Homeland Security away is what you call under control?" Fitz huffed like a school teacher annoyed with a student.

"If it wasn't you then why don't we just call the police?" Simmons suggested.

"Because," Nat groaned. "This person is after me specifically. If someone was smart enough to steal my face and one of my false identifications, you would think that they would be smart enough to set me free from prison. Whoever this guy is, they must have a personal vendetta against me and they want me out of jail. There's some kind of plot going on and I'm trying to figure it out."

"And that's why you came to me and Leo."

"No, I came because you are the only guys I trust." _My doppelganger has a person who looked just like my brother so, at the very least, there are two of them. My doppelganger's accomplice is most likely a man if he could duplicate my brother's physical appearance aside from the mask._ "I just want to know who this person is and why they're stealing my life and face. After that, I promise to call the police and let them handle it."

"You're not going to do the thing that you used to do back in the Red Room?" Fitz asked.

"When you have a sister-in-law as well as a niece, then we'll talk. The only thing of concern right now is who is impersonating me."


	7. Keep Up

Because Jeanne was five-years-old, she was easily distracted when Jemma brought out a set of toys she bought for their child they hoped to have in the future. At least they were getting their thirty dollars worth out of these toys.

FitzSimmons was sitting on the couch while Nat was pacing a hole in the room.

"Did you figure out any clue to this imposter's identity?" Fitz asked like he hasn't already for the umpteenth time.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" It took all of her strength and willpower to not lash out at him. That and the sight of her niece peacefully playing with a toy truck. "I have no idea who this person is but they seem to know me enough to steal my face using a Photostatic Veil mask and use one of my false identities. The only thing I can come up with to the false identity is this doppelganger broke into Tony's house long before they took their honeymoon trip." _I would've seen a hole in the wall if it was recent or signs of a hole in the wall._

Simmons went onto her computer and logged into the police database. Nat and Fitz asked what she was doing. "I'm trying to get footage of the attack in North and South Carolina."

"Both attack sites were at A.I.M. buildings," Nat reminded. "Either this person holds a grudge against Advanced Idea Mechanics or they were former Advanced Idea Mechanics." When she said this sentence aloud, she went back to internal thinking and wondered who was it that knew of her on a personal level that worked at Advanced Idea Mechanics. "I don't know anyone who works at A.I.M."

"Is it possible that you didn't know they worked at A.I.M.?" Fitz asked. "Or maybe you're looking at it the wrong way: What if instead of it being someone who knows you on a personal degree, it is someone who holds a grudge against you."

_You've got to be kidding me._ "You think it's someone from the Red Room?"

Fitz shook his head. "If it was someone from the Red Room, then why were they targeting buildings owned by a corporation that has nothing to do with the Red Room?"

Simmons scrolled down her computer as she read a police report on this Natalia Rushman who gassed an A.I.M. building with a seemingly harmless gas. "There is no footage of what happened when one Dr. Gilbert Wiles went into a classified room with this Natalie Rushman. This person either knew where the security cameras were or they snuck in and disabled them."

"But if there's no footage, then why bother wearing a mask to frame me?"

Simmons had an answer to that question like she was loaded for bear. "Because realistically, when you're trying to gas out a building with poison gas, then you would want to be conspicuous about it. Looking directly at cameras means you're either a suicide bomber or you want to be caught. She doesn't want it to be too obvious."

_Great, a villain who actually thinks outside the box. Why can't villains go back to being stupid these days?_ "Is there any footage at all?"

Simmons looked through the footage. When she found none, another tactic came to mind. Instead of focusing on what happened inside, she should focus on what happened outside. If this attack happened near the beach, then there must be security camera footage. No matter how big the beach is, it is nearly impossible to avoid the traffic cams. "I don't have access to street cameras," Simmons said regretfully. "So that's why I'm going to hack it."

Nat looked up at her to make sure she was hearing right and she saw Simmons typing like she was in a speed typing contest and she was in the first place. Less than thirty seconds later, a black screen pops up and there are four different camera angles of the beach and street visible on the screen. "You broke the law for me, I do owe you."

"I need the oil in my car changed." Simmons switches cameras until she stops on the car with Gilbert Wiles inside. Natalie Rushman sat in the passenger seat but her face was angled to the left so only half her face was visible. "She makes the facial captures in the footage look realistic. We can't see her face all the way but enough to identify her."

Nat stormed over to the computer and looked down. It was like seeing another twin sibling of herself. But she was identical in almost every way. That Photostatic veil duplicated every feature on Nat's face. Her thin jaw, cheekbones, wavy red hair (a wig), it was almost perfect.

_Almost._

"I really would like to know why my doppelganger is," Nat said like an impatient child. "You can do some kind of camera sketch with your computer?"

Simmons chuckles. "Flattered but fallible." She switches to another camera and a camera from another set of four. "The only thing I can come up with is that you have a copycat who is smart, has your face and fake IDs, and she is kind enough not to give your location away in Washington D.C."

Nat was analyzing every word Simmons said but one word caught her full attention. "Not give away my location in Washington D.C.?"

"Yeah?" Simmons wondered what she said wrong.

Nat licked her lips before putting a hand on Simmons's shoulder. "One year ago, I had a small encounter with A.I.M. I was retrieving some files that they planned to extort and I had a little run-in with one of their latest inventions. They called him the Super-Adaptoid."

"And?"

"And, the only way this imposter knows me is through the Super-Adaptoid incident. Either he or she was one of the creators or an onlooker. It doesn't matter what position, only that there is an A.I.M. lab here in Washington D.C. This imposter has to have gotten her gadgets from somewhere."

"And you think it's the A.I.M. headquarters here in Washington D.C.?"

"Yes."

"Are you planning to do your Red Room thing or something?"

"If this doppelganger is steering Homeland Security away from Washington D.C., it's because it is beneficial to whatever plot they have in mind and its to get to me. A.I.M. is a sophisticated company and I'm sure there will be dozens of people working at A.I.M. but I'm going to go down to one of their labs, download all their files, and bring them back here for safe analysis."

"What if that is what the doppelganger wants?" Fitz asked. "For you to steal his or her files?"

Nat shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. "Then I'll give him what he _wants_ before I give him what he _doesn't_ want."

* * *

A.I.M. Lab in Washington D.C.

Natasha Romanoff, AKA, The Black Widow, was dressed in her bluish-black catsuit and fitted on a pair of leather boots and tactical fingerless gloves. It was the black sky from above that concealed her from easy sight. She crouched down in the bushes and rubbed her fingers together, a nervous tic she's had for a while. A security guard with a flashlight walks in front of the bushes and shines it. Nat backs away slowly like she was carrying a tray full of plutonium. She keeps her head low and waits for the light to shine in a different direction and the guard whistle as he walked away.

_These guys give security guards a bad name._

She jumps out of the bush and onto the pavement. She presses her back against a brick wall and pulls out a firearm from her holster. It wasn't a lethal firearm, however, just one that would give someone a nasty headache.

She looks at the front door, narrowing her eyes at a security camera. Just as she expected from the blueprints FitzSimmons printed out for her. One guard standing in front of the door, just below the camera's view. Twelve yards away and the camera was rotating left to the right. All it would take is one clean shot and he would fall unconscious and barely out of the camera's view. Nat took the risk and fired a tranquilizer dart.

The guard pulled something out of his neck before he collapsed near the door. Nat runs, timing the camera and hides behind various objects like a car or a cement bench. She reaches the door and quickly pulls the guard out of sight and hides him in the bushes.

She opens up the door and slides inside without opening the door all the way. Now she was in an environment with all the lights turned on. She moves forward, concealing her tranquilizer and looks at a security guard standing at the front desk.

He sits in a chair and reads a newspaper while putting a donut on the desk.

_You've got to be kidding me? Jelly-filled donuts? No wonder you look like the first pregnant man._

She needed a diversion. She already knew that there was one camera at the end of the hall but it was out of sight so, therefore, out of mind. It was just the security guard to deal with. Good thing she still had a lucky tranquilizer gun with her.

One squeeze of the trigger and-

The security guard gets a call from the desk phone. He picks it up and a conversation transpires between him and another man.

_Please don't be your girlfriend...who I hope wasn't crushed during sex._

"I'm on my way out." He hung up the phone and headed for the front door. Nat backed away and watched the security guard exit the building and lock up behind him.

_You just saved me one tranquilizer dart._

Nat took the stairs up, knowing like the back of her hand that there would be cameras in the elevator.

_Which floor is the one with archives?_ She stops and kneels to pull out her phone. The blueprints on her photos indicate that the archives room was on the eighth floor. The sign in front of her reads that she was on the tenth floor. "You've got to be kidding me." She puts her phone away and jogs down the steps.

When she makes it, the door to the eight floors opens and there stood a guard. He gasped at the intruder in front of him.

_Shit!_

Nat charged him and tackled him to the ground. With her on top, she shoves her forearms into his throat and pushes deeper until he loses consciousness. "Got to sleep."

_SHIT!_

Her eyes slowly look up to the wall in front of her were above two elevators, there was a camera and it was angled downward right on her. "Oh shit." She runs out of sight below the camera.

_It saw me, I'm toast._

She looks up at the camera, fearing the worst. But after a careful look, she realized there was nothing to fear.

Natasha Romanoff may have been a regular human being with no superpowers, but she was extremely lucky.

The wires to the camera are cut.

_That saved my crispy bacon but why would someone cut the wires to a security camera on the floor with the archive room? Unless…._

The unconscious guard had a dead cigarette in his hands.

_That explains why._

She makes it across the hallway until she finds a door that's been labeled 'Archives'. She tries pushing it open but finds that it is locked and an electronic keycard was required. "Why can't breaking be easy these days." She runs back to the security guard and searches through him for a keycard. She finds one in his back pocket and brandishes it with a smile. "There's the ticket to getting in."

She puts the keycard in her back pocket before she drags the unconscious guard out of sight. "At least you're skinny." She leaves his body on top of a chair and pulls his hat down to make it look like he was sleeping.

_Hope you don't snore._

She uses the keycard to swipe her way into the archive room, where there stood about six aisles of folders and documents stacked up in untidy ways. It looked like a wax museum but every artifact was a folder made of wax. She had no idea where to start; it was like trying to find a paperclip that had been melted into a wax candle in an entire barrel full of wax candles.

_I need a raise._


	8. Stepping On The Moment

"Time to get started."

Nat digs through the room, first looking for a computer and she finds one in the back. The computer was turned off so she had to power it back on and when she did, it didn't take long for her to hack into the homepage. This computer system had an A.I.M. Logo as its home screen and when she opened up a browser page, there was an identical logo.

_Advanced Idea Mechanics sure are vain._

She pulls out a flash drive she brought with her and starts downloading all the files that she could. It was a rather large collection of files but she did have a large flash drive and if for some reason that flash drive fills up completely with data, she's got two more.

_Three is my lucky number._

She distracts herself from the weight by moving down the aisles with the folders on the shelves. She randomly plucks through the folders, looking for nothing in particular as none of the folders were labeled with words, only in colors. The greens were put in one spot while the red and orange ones were put in separate spots of their own.

"Why does everything have to be color-coded these days? Can't they just go back to Villainous Stupidity?"

She heads back over to the computer to see the flash drive full of files and there were still several thousand files needed to be downloaded. Whatever system A.I.M. was using to hold all their files, Nat was jealous and wishing that she had this kind of computer.

"This won't do," she told herself before she pulled the flash drive out. "I have to narrow down the search." She digs through the computer files until she comes across a file marked 'Super-Adaptoid'. "That looks like the key right there."

When she opens the file, she sees a blueprint design of the humanoid robot that attacked her one year and one month ago. It had been maybe two or three weeks since her interference in Operation White Widow and she barely made it out alive and killed that robot. As she looks through the designs, she sees a name on the bottom right called 'Monica Rappacini'.

"Monica Rappacinin, who is that I wonder."

She types in her name and her file come up.

_Monica Rappacini, Scientist Supreme of Advanced Idea Mechanics. Scientists Supremes are the highest positions held in A.I.M._

She scrolls down her character profile.

_She has exceptional intelligence, IQ roundabout the same as Bobby Fisher, excelled in dozens of science fields like chemistry, physics, biology, robotics, cybernetics (whatever those are), engineering, biochemistry, and a field that I can't pronounce. And she was Miles Warren's first wife? That's something new._

She checks the files for other people who were involved in the creation of Super-Adaptoid.

_Gilbert Wiles, Alessandro Brannex, Harry Daze._ She pulls out her phone and searches up the name. _Gilbert Wiles died in North Carolina due to a brain aneurysm. Alessandro Brannex died because he was injected with an anesthetic amount of an unidentified biological nerve agent. I hope he didn't suffer, but I'm an assassin and my job right now is to find my doppelganger. Grieving comes later. _

But then another thing struck her mind. _Is Monica Rappacini my doppelganger?_

That's when the answer to her question came in a not-so-subtle form. The computer screen lit up read and a message popped up, saying, "Nice to meet you, Natasha Romanoff."

"Shit!" Nat yells. "You knew I was coming, didn't you?" She punched the screen but not hard enough to crack it. "You planned on me to find that file." Her imposter was indeed Monica Rappacini and she played Nat like a broken Harp. Now she was starting to doubt the credibility of the file that she found. For all she knew, Rappacini would have planted a fake file with fake information while her real file was deleted. This must've been a precaution in case Nat started going after her doppelganger and she fell right into the bear trap like a hungry careless cub.

The door to the archive room opened up and walked in two guards. Nat jumps and accidentally knocks over a flower vase and it shatters. The guards spot Nat and shine their lights on her. She froze in a typing position as she awkwardly tried to explain herself.

"I was just deleting your search history so your wives wouldn't get mad at the content." She sported a smile. She evolved from a frozen position to sprinting off as soon as she saw the guards reach for their guns.

Nat kicks Guard 1 in the face before grabbing Guard 2 and scissors him to the ground with her feet. She grabs him by the arm and twists it.

Guard 1 gets up and lunges for Nat, tackling her to the ground and putting her in a chokehold. Nat pulls out her tranq and shoots him three times in the chest. She rolls him off before shooting the other one in the head.

_I blow my cover because I jump and knock over a vase. How stupid of you, Nat._

She runs out of the room but more guards appear in front of the doorway. She hides behind the shelves as about a dozen of them fill the room.

_Me opening that file must've activated some kind of silent alarm. Rappacini is good I will admit._

Nat sticks to the shadows and keeps in a crouching position. She conceals her tranq gun as she knows using it will only cause the death of her. There was one guard at the door and he had a firearm clutched in his hands.

_Loading your weapon with real bullets, I do like a challenge._

She grabs for something on her utility belt. It was a sphere the size of a kid's marble that was colored silver. She presses her thumb against it before she rolls it at the guard's feet. The sphere electrocutes the floor and zaps the guard painfully in the legs and he wiggled his feet like he was in a dance contest.

Nat runs and leaps over the electric floor. Barely avoiding getting shocked, Nat jumps over the dancing guard and shoves him to the ground once she is on the other side of him. She shoves him into the room, receiving a mild shock in the process, and closes the door. She looked for the lock, only to realize that it was on the inside of the door. "Shit."

She makes a run for it. She presses the call button for the elevator but no light comes on. "Perfecto."

She heads back to the stairs, heads through the door, and starts running down. The only thing that stopped her was when she heard heavy and fast-paced footsteps coming up the stairs and flashlight beams were dancing on the wall.

More guards came her way and there was a lot more this time.

_It's like what they say: What is down has to have been up._

She climbs up the stairs onto the next floor. While she stops on the eleventh floor, she checks the blueprints on her phone. There was a fire escape on the floor she was on. "That saved me some time." She is about to open the door when it is slammed open and a guard charges into her. She is caught unexpectedly and almost tumbles down the stairs but she shoves the guard with all her might into the wall before driving a hammer fist into his temple.

She heard the footsteps' volume increase as the seconds go by.

She runs through the door and shuts it. She quickly looks around and the closest thing she could find that could block the door was a wooden chair. She picks it up and barred it under the doorknob.

_Time to find the fire escape._

Nat runs down the end of the hall after seeking out for any potential threats. Like always, luck was on her side during times like this. She runs down the hall before she stops at a junction with a window. She looks down the window and sees nothing she could stand on. Even so, there was no lock on the window. "Keep moving," she self-motivated herself.

She continued running down the hallway, passing several doors on the way but found no other window. "At least I'm getting exercise from running." She starts pushing open doors and looks for a window.

_No window, of course._

One of the doors she burst through was another staircase. "No time." Then the door she barricaded was kicked down and a dozen security guards armed with assault rifles filled the hall. "But time calls for improvising."

She ran up another set of stairs. Honestly, at this point, it was getting boring for her. It was like she was on a treadmill but this treadmill kept ascending up and up and she had to use some kind of physical energy just to keep her from falling over.

On the twelfth and thirteenth floor, both doors were chained shut, so she kept running up until she found an open door. There was only one: The fifteenth floor.

"This height isn't exactly ideal for a fire escape."

Desperate times call for desperate measures. She runs up to the twentieth floor if she had to. But she settled on going through the door leading to the fifteenth floor. There were multiple windows this time, but none of them had locks. Of course, she could break them and climb out, but she didn't know which side of the building she was on and she parked her car somewhere.

She took out the blueprint photo and deduced that she was on the east side of the building while her car was parked on the opposite side.

"Let's do this." She resumed running down the hall before she made it across a window that did have a lock on it. She opens the window and climbs out, looking down. The ground was a hundred and fifty feet below her.

_They say don't look down but I broke that rule._

There was nothing for her to climb onto, no fire escape. "They seriously have to update their blueprints, if they can." She turns to a door behind her and tries opening it but it was locked and an electronic keycard was required like the last time.

"Of course, they continue to make it difficult." She returns to the window and looks out, wondering what to do. "I can't climb down, only up." She looks to her side. There was a pipeline leading from the floor underneath up to the roof. It looked like it could hold her weight, despite the rust beginning to form on the pipe. "They might need a plumber after this."

She climbs out the window and the wind tries to blow her away like a housefly. She grips the pipeline tightly and glues her feet to the wall.

She climbs to the top and reaches the roof. She runs to the center of the roof and is amazed by the view. She's been in high places before but she was still entranced by how bright Washington D.C. looks at night when all the houses lit up.

_So peaceful ...in such a stressful situation._

She runs to the edge of the roof pointing to the west and uses her hawkeyes to spot her car from below. "Just gotta find a way down." She checks all edges of the roof to find a fire escape, not a single one was within reach from this height.

"Guess I'm just going to have to do this the hard way."

She reaches for her grappling gun and arms it up. She walks away from the edge and breathes heavily. Her chest pounds against her ribcage like a hammer before she turns back and faces the edge. "I am a spider so I should be swinging like a spider." She sprints for the edge.

Like in slow-motion, she jumps off the edge. As she flies through the air, she aims her grappling gun and shoots it out to the wall. The hook stabs the brick wall and stiffens as she makes it ten feet away from the edge.

Nat swings like Tarzan on a vine, kicking her feet out and launching herself through a window. Without even breaking a sweat, she dives headfirst through an air vent grate and slides down headfirst, slowing herself by pushing herself up against the wall.

It wasn't long before she hit rock bottom and squeezed herself out of the air vents like a worm. She fell onto the floor in the lobby before scattering. She jumped back into her car and drove off before any guards could spot her.

"I need a vacation after this."


	9. I Only Pretend To Know

"Are you sure?"

"YES!" Nat shouted at FitzSimmons to answer their question. "Monica Rappacini is the woman trying to frame me for the gas attacks. She is the one who has been from A.I.M. base to A.I.M. base, killing everyone who had a part in the creation of Super-Adaptoid." She paces around the living room, her hands on her hips and sweat sliding down her forehead. That chase through the A.I.M. building sure gave her a workout. She concentrated on steadying her breathing because she was already starting to snap at the others for no specific reason at all. Jeanne was sitting in the kitchen and eating a carton of ice cream that Simmons got her. "She planted false information within the archives lab, knowing that I would be there. She is quite the strategic and calculative planner, I will admit that."

"Is there any authentic information that you found?" Fitz asked. "Anything could help us out at this point."

"She is a ghost," Nat said. "With the false information that she implanted, I don't know what's real anymore. For all I know, she could be a clone that China created to spy on America."

"That's a little far-fetched," Simmons nervously said, not wanting to tick off Nat if possible. "But anything is possible with this woman."

Fitz recalled a detail from the news report and snapped his fingers. "What about the accomplice?"

Nat looked at him with a confused look before she thought back to the news report. "She had an accomplice with her that posed as my brother."

"It has to be a man, right? Maybe her boyfriend, husband, brother...hell, it could be her father even."

Nat turned her back to them as she thought of a list of suspects. She was considering the possibility that maybe this was Agent Grant Ward from the Red Room but he was believed to have died during Operation: White Widow. That was the only suspect she could think of but she discarded the possibility due to the aforementioned reason as well as believing that Grant Ward is too reckless to portray someone like Taskmask. Taskmaster and Ward had an intense rivalry during their days at the Red Room. The odds of Grant Ward being Monica Rappacini's accomplice are less than one in a billion.

"I can't think of anybody who could be her accomplice," Nat gave up. Perhaps the accomplice was somebody she didn't know. "It has to be someone I've never met before. Maybe someone who worked in A.I.M."

"We already know who your imposter is so we should focus on the accomplice," Fitz said. "Maybe it's someone who knows who your brother is on a personal degree."

"I didn't know Rappacini on a personal degree. I've never even met her and she still came after me indirectly. Chances are, these people are complete strangers. We're going to have to work in the dark on this one."

"What do you suggest?"

Nat tucked her hands into her pockets and contemplated her actions. Her eyes glued to the floor as she started pacing once more, going in circles like an amusement park ride.

_Think, Nat. Think, think, think. If you can't find any online information on Monica Rappacini, then how will you be able to figure out her accomplice. This one, I'm truly left in the dark. The only thing I can think of is…_

She turns to Fitz with a serious look on her face. "Pull up all last known locations of Monica Rappacini. Or, the 'fake me'."

Fitz tilted his head like a dog.

"Monica Rappacini is keeping us in the dark for a reason, she has a plan." She takes her hands out of her pocket and crosses them over her chest. "A strategic planner like Monica Rappcini isn't just going to hop around from A.I.M. building to A.I.M. building without a goal. She is one of the creators of the Super-Adaptoid, along with Gilbert Wiles, Alessandro Brannex, and Harry Daze."

"But," Simmons spoke up, "If she is one of the creators of Super-Adaptoid, why is she killing all the other creators?"

"To steal their credit?" Fitz thought. "Maybe she wants to be in the spotlight."

Nat begs to differ. "No, I don't think this has anything to do with Super-Adaptoid. All of her attack sites report that she has stolen absolutely nothing from the labs except deleted a few files and none of them were Super-Adaptoid files."

"Won't police find her name on the Super-Adaptoid file then?"

"Not necessarily," Simmons answered her husband. "If she was trying to kill all members of the Super-Adaptoid project, then she would most likely delete the files because she would be listed as one of the creators and possible suspect."

"But she's not deleting the Super-Adaptoid files," Fitz deduced.

"A ruse for the public," Simmons explained. "She wants the police to think that Nat is an assassin killing everyone part of the Super-Adaptoid project."

"But if most of the members of the project were dead, then the others would be alerted of the would-be assassin."

"And the only way for her to be eliminated as a suspect is to fake her death."

Fitz turns to the computer and searches up Rappacini's name. The closest weblink had the keyword, 'Dead' in the title. He opened up the page and read an article on how Monica Rappacini died in her home one year ago. She was gassed to death with a nerve agent and the killer is Natalie Rushman.

"She faked her death," Fitz said aloud for Nat and Simmons. "So she is going after her former employees but it's not because of the Super-Adaptoid."

Nat sat down next to her niece and patted her on the back. "She's killing them for some other reason. If it is personal, then I don't know what her endgame is."

"Bad person," Jeanne said with her mouth covered in ice cream.

Nat smiled at her niece. "That's right, she is a bad person."

"And the accomplice?" Simmons reminded.

"Someone new."

"But what about the gas attacks and biological injections that have been reported?"

Nat thought for a second for an answer. The first one that came to mind made her say, "If what her file that she implanted in the computer was true to an extent, then Rappacini has excelled in numerous scientific fields. She would obviously be familiar with how to make harmless gas weapons. Assuming, of course, they are harmless."

"Then what's the point of the gas if it's harmless?"

"That's her endgame," Nat said before getting out of her chair. "Regardless of where she goes, Rappacini leaves behind a trail of seemingly harmless chemical and biological weapons. Both are harmless but I think that it is also part of her endgame."

"If this is some kind of khem-o/biowarfare, then what is the point of harmless gas?" Fitz arched his eyebrows in confusion. He was looking around as if the answer was in the room with him. "If the gas or biological agents can't kill anyone, then what's the point?"

"Hard to say," Nat responded immediately. "But if I could get inside Rappacini's head, then maybe I could figure out what it is she is after. What do former chaotic Scientists Supremes of A.I.M. desire other than world domination?"

"But," Simmons called. "If the gas and bioweapons, both harmless, are part of this, you think it is a ruse? You did say that Rappacini is trying to lead Homeland Security away from Washington D.C."

Nat snaps her fingers and gives a smile at Simmons. "Good point. So if she is a biochemist terrorist, then her end goals are here in Washington D.C. The harmless gas and bioweapons might be poison but the fact that she is going out of her way to kill her old colleagues and even gas them makes me wonder what else she has in mind. Maybe some kind of bioterrorist attack here in Washington D.C."

"With harmless gas and bioweapons?"

"As far as we know. If the gas and bioweapons are harmless, then it is for a reason." She rubs her chin before licking her lips. "If I could figure out what kind of harmless chemical gas that Gilbert Wiles inhaled in North Carolina and what kind of serum the officials in South Carolina were injected with, maybe I could find a connection."

"You're saying that the gas and bioweapons _are_ connected? Like they are two halves of a coin or something?"

"It makes sense," Fitz said as he walked around the table to meet up with his wife. "Monica Rappacini is a biochemist if there is some element of truth within her false profile. She would be able to know what kind of gas to make that's harmless and what kind of bloodborne biological agents that would be harmless as well. But like you said, they are two halves of the same coin."

"So the gas and serums are indeed connected?" Nat asked the two.

Fitz looked at Nat and held up his hand. "It's like in _Dexter_, Season 6, where this one killer mixed Methylphosphonyl difluoride with isopropyl alcohol. It was inaccurate but still a weapon. Individual, the two agents are harmless but once they are mixed together, they're lethal. This is what the chemical and bio serums could possibly be. They are actually two different substances that are harmless individually but when they're mixed, they're lethal."

Nat exhales deeply, a slight hint of anger expelling from her in the process. Is this what Rappacini's endgame was about? It was about the BC on NBC? Biochemical warfare?

_Of course, Operation: White Widow was nuclear and now we're dealing with biochemical warfare._

She rubs her fingers as a sign of impatience. She kept thinking of how this woman broke into Tony's house with her brother and niece inside, stole her false identities and used a holographic mask to duplicate her face.

_If this wasn't about some personal vendetta against me then what was it exactly? What was Rappacini's end goal? What is the purpose of framing me, killing her old colleagues, and leading Homeland Security away? If her purpose was to gas Washington D.C. with some kind of biochemical weapon, then what was the point of unleashing harmless gas and injecting knocked out board members with a biological substance that does not affect. She either uses one or the other; what is her end goal?_

"I say we should call the proper authorities and let them handle this," Simmons suggested. "If she has some kind of plans with that biochemical weapon of hers, we should alert Homeland Security of Monica Rappaccini."

Nat was about to agree with her but held her reigns as she thought about the outcome. If Rappacini was this strategic enough to fake her death, frame Nat, and plant a false profile in the archive labs of A.I.M., then she could outwit the law. Plus, she has an accomplice who could easily be an inside-man of Homeland Security. Nat weighed in all the possibilities but they all kept coming back to her taking Rappaccini down herself. How she planned to do that was something she had to figure out herself.

"Rappacini's no preschooler, Homeland Security can't touch her." She said this sentence with regret because as easy as it sounded, it was nothing more than a mission that _sounds_ easy when in reality, it wasn't. "If Rappacini's end goal is within Washington D.C. then she must have some kind of base of operations. Perhaps a chemical factory."

"Unless she wanted it off the grids then it wouldn't be a chemical factory known to the public," Fitz analyzed. "But, if we got a sample from both the gas and the serums, we could figure out what to look for. We could cross-reference the levels of chemical fumes or bioweapons that have been polluted into the air."

"So a private lab?" Nat asked. "If it's a private lab, then it is off the books."

"That's why we'll need a sample of the chemical gas and serums," he continued. "But the only way to get samples would be to go to the attack sites and retrieve them."

The attack sites? North Carolina and South Carolina, two out of three of the Super-Adaptoid creators were killed. One via brain aneurysm others via poisoning, neither a direct result of the biochemical weapon. It looked like they were back to square one unless…

"I'll fly to North Carolina and South Carolina to retrieve the samples," Nat said with her arms at her side like she was speaking to a drill sergeant. "I will fly to the attack sites, retrieve the samples, bring them right back here for you guys to analyze."

"Are you crazy?" If Simmons could slap Nat across the face for saying something stupid, she would slap Nat across the face twice. "Homeland Security is looking for you, you're mental for doing something like that."

"I may be mental, but not mentally ill." She pauses for a brief moment, her eyes turning to both spouses before she spoke again. "Homeland Security can't do anything, I can. I've had proper training for situations like this. It'll be like going to the market to buy two apples."

"Except they have heavily armed guys with tear gas and gas masks waiting for you at every entrance."

Fitz backed up his wife's statement by saying, "This time, Nat, it might be risky for you. You can't go there by yourself."

Nat licked her lips and rolled her eyes. "I have no choice. You two are lovers, not fighters. I can fight alone."

"But you'll fight better with someone by your side."

Nat recognized that voice from behind her. Her eyes widened and she did a one-eighty and stared into the hallway. A figure stood there and no faces were needed for Nat to know who it was.

"Hey, little brother."


	10. Teeth

Maui, Hawaii

Who in their cotton-picking minds would want to leave a paradise such as Hawaii? The beaches are warm, the waves are crashing, and the coconut in Tony's Taskmaster Master's hand had milk that tasted like Manna from Heaven.

Tony sat on a beach chair with sunglasses on. Despite wearing a Santa Muerte skull mask, he was bare-skinned everywhere except his waist area, where he wore a pair of black swimming trunks. He put lotion on ahead of time because he would rather enjoy paradise at a community pool with the beach insight than anything else. His eyes were closed under his mask and without even thinking or looking, he grabs his coconuts from the side table and puts the straw under his mask to get a drink. He sighs and puts the coconut down.

A pill music player was being played at medium volume with rap music. It was disturbing Tony, who almost dropped his coconut when the beat woke him up. Infuriated, he picks himself up and confronts the four teenagers.

"Excuse me," Tony said calmly. "But, I'm on a honeymoon with my wife and I was hoping for some peace and relaxation. Could you take your music box somewhere else?"

"Why not?" a scrawny teenager said. "We're sorry to have disturbed you."

"Thank you." Tony turned away, expecting to hear the volume lower but it only got louder. He composed himself and turned to the teenagers with a glare that was hidden under his skull mask. He walks back to the pill speaker and kicks it off the bench like a soccer ball. The music box was launched and smashed upon impact on the ground.

Tony sighs with a smile and turns away.

The scrawny teenager and his three friends rise and glared at Tony. "You're paying for that music box with your teeth old man."

Tony turned back to them. "You mean this set of teeth?" He lifts his skull mask for the four teenagers to see his hideously disfigured face. Their tough-guy personas quickly vanished into scared little shits. They didn't say anything before they ran off.

Tony returned the mask in place before returning to his seat.

Mercedes Merced-Masters climbs out of the community pool in a yellow bikini. She sits down in the beach chair next to Tony and wraps a towel around her shoulders. "You like being a lazy bone, don't you?"

Tony heard her and sat up. He pretends to be offended by putting his hands on his tanned chest. "How dare you? I've earned the right to be lazy. After fifty-five hours of a week of active service in the Special Weapons and Tactics squad, I deserve to be lazy. I deserve to eat like crap and drink all the beer I want because this is the honeymoon that we missed out."

"I remember." She leaned back in her chair and lays down. She reaches for a pair of sunglasses and puts them on. "You got me pregnant and we had to cancel this whole trip."

"Whose fault is it that your body is undeniably attractive? I mean, when I first met you. I was persistent and you were stubborn."

"Because I wasn't interested in an intimate relationship at the time. But I fell for you over time, didn't I?"

"Yeah." He takes another sip from the coconut. He leans back in his chair and sighs. "Can you feel that sun? I can't believe we missed a beautiful honeymoon like this over some fugitive in your womb."

"Watch it, that's still my daughter."

"Okay, your precious little fugitive."

Mercedes reaches for Tony's hand and takes it. "Our precious little fugitive."

Before the conversation could continue further, a tall man in black shorts and a white shirt approaches the Masters with a clipboard in hand.

"Mr. and Mrs. Masters," the waiter said formally. "Are you enjoying your stay here at the Callahan hotel?"

Tony had that answer loaded like a bullet in a gun. "You don't have to ask me twice, and this coconut is like Manna from Heaven."

"Our finest." He taps a pen and presses it to the clipboard. "Are you ready to order?"

"Yes, I want the biggest cheeseburger you've got. And food on the side, I would like a bowl of fruit salad and instead of a salad, I would like chili cheese fries."

Mercedes took her turn to order. "I'll just have a veggie burger. And for sides, I would like salad dressing with a fruit bowl." She tried to act modestly in her manner of speaking but Tony saw right through her facade.

"Of course," the waiter said after finishing writing down. He turned back to the two and bowed like a ninja to a sensei. "Your orders will be ready shortly."

"Oh," Mercedes spoke up before he could getaway. "And I would like a martini."

"Martini." He writes it down. "Good day, honeymoon couple."

The waiter leaves and Tony looks at his wife. "A martini? Are you sure you don't want a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred?"

_Reminder: Put James Bond drink on the bucket list._

"After putting up with that little monster for a couple of years, I finally get to drink." Mercedes adjusted her chair so she was in a sitting position. "I'm not a cynic, I love my daughter, but I miss the old times where you could just drink."

_She is NOT an alcoholic._

"I know how that feels." Tony lifted his mask to take another sip of milk.

Mercedes noticed that her husband was lifting his mask to get a drink. "You know, you can just take off your mask. It'll be much easier."

He snapped his head towards her in like a silent predator who just spotted prey that he was sneaking on. "I'm not taking off my mask."

Like an editor finding an error, she realized she struck a sour note. "I'm sorry to have offended you but I thought that it might be easier for you to drink from your coconut."

Tony raises his mask to show her his face. "At least my fleshy face being torn off gives me an alibi." He moves the mask back into position. He turns and sees the food coming in and he feels his mouth water like food in the microwave. "Delicious cheeseburger with chili fries, have arrived."

The waiter and two others were carrying food trays with Tony and Mercede's orders. They placed the food down on the side table and the spouses paid the waiter a tip for his generosity. After that, they enjoyed the rest of their paradise in peace. That is until they got a phone call from Tony's house phone.

_Why can't parents have one stress-free day from children?_

"Hello?" There was no answer. He waited ten seconds to hang up before he heard another voice on the other end. One voice that slapped all the cynicism out of him like a cheap drum.

"Hi, Daddy."

Tony sat up and smiled under his mask. He forgot how much he missed his daughter. "Hi, sweetie," he said softly, "How have you been?"

"Good, I'm missing you." There was a brief pause. "How's mommy?"

"She can't get enough of paradise down here." She winks at his wife, who was staring back at him. "Next time we're on vacation, we're going to bring you, would you like that?"

"What are you doing, Daddy?"

"Relaxing by the pool with a coconut in hand, a plate with the biggest cheeseburger I've seen, a side of fruit salad and chili cheese fries." Even with one hand, he still lifted his mask and got another sip of coconut milk. "I even ordered a horizontal chair so I could do a sit-up every time I drink from the coconut."

"Aunty Natty is taking me to a pool."

"She is...last time I checked, we didn't have a pool."

"No, she's taking me to _a_ pool."

"What pool?"

"She's taking me to a pool somewhere, I don't know."

Tony sensed something within her voice that gave off suspicious bells in his head. It felt like his spine was tingling and the more he tried to choke it down, the more irritating it became. So he decided to address it head-on. "What did Aunty Natty do?"

"Aunty Natty didn't do anything, some people are looking for her because she is famous."

Tony is stunned and widens his eyes. He looks at his wife as he speaks. "Last time I checked, my big sister does like being in the spotlight. What did she do to make her 'famous'?"

She heard Jeanne stay silent for a moment before she cleared her throat. "According to the news from something called Homeland Security: Natalie Rushman was responsible for a gas attack in North Carolina and someone died of a brain aneurysm." Tony nodded as if he was expecting this. "I don't even know what a brain aneurysm is but Aunty Natty says that Natalie Rushman looks just like her. Maybe she has a twin sister."

_We do have a man-whore of a father so it's possible._ "Her name was Natalie Rushman?" _That's one of Nat's false identities._

"Yes."

_Did my complicated half-twin sister do this or something? Did she go out of her way to fly to North Carolina to kill someone with her 'Kiss of the Dragon' acupuncture-to-the-neck technique?_

"You know what, the food here is terrible." He looked at his cheeseburger and made an apologetic facial expression under his mask like he was apologizing for insulting the food. "This hotel does deserve only four stars instead of five like it was recommended. What is Aunty Natty doing right now?"

"She's in your room and I think I heard her punch the wall."

_The false IDs that I carried for her. That daughter of a whore._ "We'll be seeing you soon, we gotta get a fly." He hung up after telling her he loved her. Tony turned to his wife with his fingers interlaced. "My complicated half-twin sister is in big trouble with the law. Homeland Security to be exact."

"What did she do?" Mercedes sat up and copied his position.

"My sister is responsible for a gas attack in North Carolina and someone died of a brain aneurysm. And our daughter has no idea what a brain aneurysm is."

"Do you believe that?" Mercedes said in an almost agitated voice. "Do you believe that she killed someone with poison gas and killed someone via brain aneurysm? How is that even possible?"

"Even when we were assassins, Nat did not use poison gas as innocent people could've died as collateral damage. Brain aneurysm fits her MO. You remember her 'Kiss of the Dragon' acupuncture need-to-the-neck technique?" She nods. "You pull the needle too slow or too fast out of the neck, causing all the blood to flow to the head."

"I'm intimately familiar."

"My sister, when I get my hands around her throat and choke her into unconsciousness." He gets up and claps his hands together like he was trying to get attention. "I'm so sorry for this honeymoon interruption, but I think I should get back home. You stay here, have all the fun you want, you can even have my big cheeseburger."

"Not a chance," Mercedes says as she jumps to her feet. "My daughter too. And I want to do more than wrap my hands around her throat. I want to squeeze her throat until her brain pops out of her skull like a firework."

Tony chuckled and suddenly felt turned on. "You do have such a way of describing your threats. I think I have Stockholm Syndrome."

She slaps him on the cheek of his mask. "We can sex talk later, let's just get home to our daughter."

"Yeah. I'm going to save my daughter, then I'm going to kill my sister."

Tony and Mercedes grab their clothes towels, and to-go bags for their food to eat on the plane.

* * *

Tony tracked down Nat in various ways. He tracked his old contacts, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, newlyweds, and he hacked into their phone cameras and spotted Nat with Jeanne.

Tony parked the car in front of the driveway and he picked the lock on the front door. He and his wife enter stealthily as they hear a conversation going on in the kitchen. It sounds heated like they were military officers discussing a plan. One thing that caught his attention was when he heard someone named Monica Rappacini impersonated Nat via Photostatic Veil and stole one of her false identities.

Fitz: That's why we'll need a sample of the chemical gas and serums, but the only way to get samples would be to go to the attack sites and retrieve them.

Nat: I'll fly to North Carolina and South Carolina to retrieve the samples, I will fly to the attack sites, retrieve the samples, bring them right back here for you guys to analyze.

Simmons: Are you crazy? Homeland Security is looking for you, you're mental for doing something like that.

Nat: I may be mental, but not mentally ill. Homeland Security can't do anything, I can. I've had proper training for situations like this. It'll be like going to the market to buy two apples.

Simmons: Except they have heavily armed guys with tear gas and gas masks waiting for you at every entrance.

Fitz: This time, Nat, it might be risky for you. You can't go there by yourself.

It all suddenly made sense. Nat wasn't a bioterrorist, someone was framing her. He was so relieved he couldn't believe he considered digging two graves. _Wow, that is a relief. But now she is being hunted by an anti-terrorist organization. Oh shit, and the real villain is still out there. Holy freaking smokes._

_She's so lucky it turned out this way. I was about to shove my boot up her ass and that wasn't half of what I wanted to do to her. Not even a quarter._

Nat licked her lips and rolled her eyes. "I have no choice. You two are lovers, not fighters. I can fight alone."

_Now's my time._

"But you'll fight better with someone by your side."

Nat recognized that voice from behind her. Her eyes widened and she did a one-eighty and stared into the hallway. A figure stood there and no faces were needed for Nat to know who it was.

"Hey, little brother."

"Daddy!" Jeanne squealed and hugged her father tightly.


	11. Rose Masters

North Carolina

The night after, Nat put on her bluish-black catsuit once more and she took a plane ride to North Carolina. It was a private plane and while she made it her destination to go to North Carolina, Tony took a plane ride to South Carolina. She was going for the chemical sample while Tony was collecting the bioweapon thanks to FitzSimmons on the line helping her. She was able to locate three private labs within the area of Carolina Beach. The first two were crossed off while one of them had a sixty-three percent chance of having Gilbert Wiles' body there. Nat quickly drove to the private lab by hitchhiking in a taxi.

Turns out, the private lab was actually in a commercial building with twelve floors. Nat was stunned by this revelation. Of course, if you want a private lab, you don't go somewhere private, you just hide it in plain sight. And because this private lab was hidden in plain sight, there could be security guards hiding in plain sight as well. She saw BOLO alerts on almost every street light so the odds of her getting into were against her. But she was Natasha Romanoff. If she could break into a building for smart people with the guards giving only half an effort, then she could break into a building where the guards are hiding in plain sight and give a one hundred and ten percent effort.

The first thing she should probably wear is a ski mask just in case because commercial buildings have a lot more security cameras and they were almost impossible to avoid.

Nat improvised and wore a scarf to cover her face from her nose below. Like when she went to the A.I.M. building, it was night and her catsuit provided her with camouflage.

Nat sneaks into the alley behind the building and she climbs onto a fire escape. When she got onto the second floor, she slid open a window and climbed in through a room. The lights were off and she moved around, careful not to step on anything. It was a conference room so she jumped over the conference table.

Simple.

Of course, the body of Gilbert Wiles wouldn't be at the attack site, it would be in the morgue. What is, what kind of morgue? Where? That was the question that needed answering. Of course, there is only one morgue that poison gas victims go to. One held in a private lab. Now all she had to do was find it.

Fitz told her that the morgue would be on the eighth floor and she was on the second. All she had to do was sneak past the security cameras that she spotted in the hallway. No ski mask or it would be a dead giveaway and no real face. This calls for old-fashioned sneaking around.

She took down an air vent and crawled in. When she slithered to the end, she shoved the vent off before jumping down into an elevator shaft. She was standing on top of a moving elevator going up. She crouches down and looks at the ceiling coming down towards her.

The elevator halts and Nat's face was only inches away from being squashed against the roof. She heard a ding down below and knew that the elevator doors were opening. Given how close she was to the ceiling, she realized that she was on the second to the top floor. She couldn't jump down into the elevator without the camera spotting someone sneaking in, but she could do something else.

She opens the hatch just enough that she can see the elevator empty and the buttons. She took out her phone and she hacked into the elevator system in less than thirty seconds. "Take us down to the seventh floor."

The elevator complied and went down several stories. It stopped on the seventh floor with the elevator doors to the eight floor right in front of her. She pulls the two doors open like she was pulling ribs apart.

With the door open by a few feet, she looked for any security cameras. Seeing none, she slowly climbs through. She leaves the elevator doors open and kept a sharp eye out for any security cameras that she didn't spot in the elevator. She moves on.

She found the morgue in less than three minutes and barely managed to avoid the cameras. All she had to do was look down and pretend to cough. The door to the morgue had a camera above so she had to look like she was walking past it before she pressed her back to the wall and slowly opened the door.

The morgue was an empty room with a body bag on a table with several containers for other bodies open.

There was a tag on the bag that read Gilbert Wiles. She opens it up and finds a rotting corpse with gray skin and foggy eyes. On another table was a report on what the medical examiner found.

"Cause of death: Brain aneurysm." She turned the corpse's head over and touched the place where she believed that caused his death. "If someone was trying to copy my MO, then acupuncture needles to the neck will do. Someone must've pulled it out of him too quickly." She looks to her left and finds a vial of blood on the table. She picks it up and reads the label: Wiles' contaminated blood.

Nat unscrews the cap off and uses a cotton swab near a set of tools to retrieve a sample. She puts the cotton swab in a vial of her own that was filled with clear liquids. She squeezed the vial until she heard a crack. If the clear liquid turned red, then there were no components of any chemical weapon but it turned green, which indicated that there was. "Jackpot." She empties half the blood vial into her vial before packing it away.

_Time to get out of here._

She turned around and the door was open. The medical examiner had returned with a thermal cup in her hand.

"Natalya," she slurred drunkenly, "You're back already?"

* * *

South Carolina

Tony had much better luck because he didn't need to go to the morgue. Since the people who were injected with the biological agent were alive, all he needed was a sample. Chances are, they were being studied in a private lab. He wasn't going to a morgue, just a private lab. His Santa Muerte skull mask had now been fitted with a holographic setting so he could change its appearance. Maybe he should've given the mask to his sister because she can't show her face but she did insist. She didn't train at the Red Room just to look good when she fights.

Tony changed his mask so he looked like a young man. His appearance looked exactly like a generic young man's appearance: Long hair colored reddish-brown, fair skin, a thin jaw, pale lips, and green eyes….and that's only a vague description compared to what he truly did look like under the mask before his face was torn off.

_No, I do not wear a mask because I'm disfigured. Although, my now disfigured face gives me an excuse._

The private lab that he made his destination was a private lab in a hospital. He put on a lab coat he bought on eBay and walked right in.

"Good morning," he waved politely to the doctors, "Just getting down to ICU," he said offhandedly.

He walked through the door to the private lab where the blood was taken. There were dozens of blood vials on the shelves and he didn't know which one to take.

Then the door opened and walked in a woman with a lab coat on. She had dark hair and pale skin. Her eyes went wide when she saw Tony.

_Please don't sound the alarm._

"Oh...my...god…" the doctor gasped. "Tony...Masters!"

_What! WHAT!_

She charges for him and wraps her hands tightly around him. He gasps in shock at the sudden crazy fan wrapped around him.

"I know who you are!" she laughed. "I'm your biggest fan. My name is Rose."

"Like my wife's favorite flower." Tony, in a panicked state, pushes her hands down and shakes his head quickly. "I'm not Tony Masters. I'm Dr..."_ Charlie._ "I'm Dr. Charlie."

"No you're not," Rose shook her head. "Charlie was my partner-in-crime before I 'took care' of him."

"I don't know who you are but I _am_ Dr. Charlie." Tony looks into her eyes and sees that she has that crazy look that fanatics had when they met their idol.

"I'm not stupid, Tony. I know who you are and I know what you're after." She looks over to a blood vial and pulls it from the shelf. It had 'contaminated blood' labeled on it. "Is this what you want? The blood with the harmless biological agent inside?"

Tony's eyes widened in shock. He took the blood vial and read the label himself. He turned back at the doctor and stuttered before he finally got the words to come out of her mouth. "Who are you and what makes you think that I'm after this?"

Rose calmed down after a long round of chuckling but her smile never disappeared. "You're my idol, Mr. Masters. I've been in love with you ever since I was a teenager." She gestures to her nametag. "I'm Dr. Rose but you can call me Rose."

"You already told me your name."

She touches his face and draws a circle around his left eye socket. "I know you're wearing a mask." She kisses him on the cheek. "I know why you wear that mask."

"I'm not Tony Masters, I'm Dr. Charlie."

"Really?" She tilts her head. She looks off to the side with a smirk on her face. "In that case, you won't mind me taking off your mask?" She snatches the mask off of his face.

Tony jumps like he's been shocked and covers his face with his hands. He blindly reaches for whatever he could find before he turns his back and rips a sleeve off the lab coat and wraps it around his face and wears it like a headband. When he turned around, only his eyes were visible and the skin around his eyes was red like he got a sunburn.

_Maybe I should've worn a spare mask under my mask like Kakashi Hatake._

Rose put Tony's skull mask on.

"I am your biggest fan, Tony," she huffed through the mask. "You've been in so many of my fantasies when I was only twenty. When you joined the Red Room, I was fifteen-years-old. When I went to prom, I had my date put a mask on his face that read 'Tony' across the face." She takes off the mask and hands it back to Tony. He snatches it back but doesn't remove the makeshift lab coat mask.

"Who are you?" If his cover was blown, why bother to continue trying to lie. This fan truly was fanatical. Maybe she was his biggest fan. "Have you been stalking me?"

"Ever since I heard you were coming back home to America." She walks around him and wraps her hands around him again. "I've been watching you for a long time and I know that you have Photographic Reflexes. I'm so envious, I wish I could swap my power for that power so we can be together spiritually."

_Hang on a flipping second, swap HER power? What the hell does that mean?_

"You're probably wondering what I mean?"

_Yeah, I was thinking that._

"I can hypnotize people. I can hypnotize people." She grabs Tony's face and turns it to her. She looks him in through the eye holes in the skull mask before she blinks three times. "I want to hypnotize you into loving me so we can live happily ever after. But I know you have a daughter and wife and you committed."

That sentence rang bells of anger. He shoved Rose against the wall and breathed in her face. "You stay away from Mercedes and Jeanne. If I see you go anywhere near them, I will make it so I'm not your celeb idol anymore."

He knows that it doesn't sound threatening, but he was this girl's idol. The best way to crush a fan was to destroy its idol. Even when he made the threat, Rose was still unaffected.

"I promise not to mess with them," she swore. "But I will always love you, Tony. You will always be the love of my life." She touched her heart dramatically. "I will always be Rose Masters to you."

_Rose Masters, she changed her last name to mine, who the hell is this woman?_


	12. Pray We Are Alone

_There is still one more target,_ Nat thought in her head as she sat down in her private plane. _Harry Daze, the last colleague of Monica Rappacini. Where is he?_ She touches a datapad on her wrist and gives an encrypted email to FitzSimmons to track down Harry Daze. Several minutes later, the message came back and revealed that Harry Daze's current whereabouts were in Miami, Florida, and his exact location was on a yacht on 114 Bleecker Canal Road. The yacht's name was Dearly Dazed Daze._ What a narcissistic name for a boat._ She picks up her brother in South Carolina before flying to Florida.

* * *

Florida

Nat and Tony stepped off the private plane. Before they left, Nat turned to the pilot. The pilot was an elderly man with gray hair and black sunglasses (**Stan** **Lee**). She paid him two hundred dollars in cash. "Don't go anywhere."

"Of course, I'm ninety-five-years-old, I got nowhere to be," the elderly man said sarcastically.

Dear Dazed Daze was a yacht floating in the middle of the marina. It was the daytime by the time the two siblings got there.

They were dressed in their assassin uniforms: Catsuit for Nat and a suit with a hood for Tony and his Santa Muerte skull mask.

"What have we got?" Tony asked as they climbed aboard the empty yacht. "Triple D for a name but I don't see anyone on board."

Nat climbs onto the upper deck and searches the yacht for Harry Daze. "He's here, or at least his cellphone is because that's what FitzSimmons was tracking." She jumps over the railing and onto the lower deck.

She looks out to the marina and sees several small boats pulling away and out into the ocean. She turns away and heads inside. Tony was still on the upper deck and she checked all the doors that she spotted.

She opened the refrigerator and found not a single food or carton of soda seemed to be missing. She turns around the corner and opens the bathroom door. The bathroom was empty.

"I found nothing on the upper deck," Tony stepped down the stairs. "What if Rappacini got him."

"That's the only thing I can think of," Nat said. "But why is his cellphone still here when he's not?"

"Maybe he's at an A.I.M. lab."

"At this point, with all the attacks, they would've put all A.I.M. labs on lockdown. Besides, Homeland Security never made the connection between Rappacinin hunting down her colleagues from when they built the Super-Adaptoid."

"And at this point, Daze would be smart enough to know not to go near any A.I.M. labs. He thinks that Natalie Rushman as Natalie Rushman, not Monica Rappacini. He thinks that somebody outside A.I.M. is hunting him, not someone from within."

"If Rappacini has already got her hands on him, we need to figure out where they're going." Tony turns away and starts searching the drawers. "Instead of looking for a Daze, looking for clues as to where he could be."

"Or any more signs of this biochemical weapon." Nat heads back up to the upper deck to search. She looks under the cushions of a resting place but finds nothing. She checks the ground like a dog searching for a treat. She checks the deck and looks over the side. The anchor was lowered she noticed and she quickly tapped her foot against a button and brought it up. Nobody was anchored onto the anchor.

Inside the cabin, Tony became desperate and he pushed the refrigerator to the ground. It was a rather small refrigerator that hotel rooms have and he searched. Nothing.

The two siblings reunite once more on the bridge.

"Find anything?" asked Tony.

"Not a thing," Nat answered. "If Rappacini was this calculative, then maybe she wanted us to find this deck. Maybe she wanted us to know that Daze was taken."

"But taken where? If she wanted us to know that Daze was gone, then where could she have taken him without leaving a clue to let us know where?"

"Unless…" Nat thought for a moment, narrowing her eyes. "She did leave a clue. She is trying to frame me and if she were to expose herself to security cameras, then she wouldn't make it too easy."

"So, if she did take Daze and injected it with either the gas, the serum, or both, then she would've left a clue."

"I wouldn't leave a cell phone behind if I was trying to assassinate someone. It gives away their last known location where they can be tracked."

"So she left the cellphone on purpose."

Nat nods. "Yeah. Speaking of which, where is the cellphone? The signal was tracked to this yacht yet where's the cellphone? It can't be underwater otherwise it wouldn't be working."

"Unless it's still on the boat."

"But cleverly hidden in plain sight."

"Maybe with the body?"

"Or some clue to lead us to Rappacini's next target, assuming she has one."

"Isn't Daze the last one to work on the Super-Adaptoid project?"

"But this isn't about Super-Adaptoid, this is about something else. She's killing off her former friends for a different reason."

"So find the cellphone…"

Nat nods with a smirk. "And we find the next piece to the puzzle."

The two siblings quickly climb down into the cabin and stand in the middle.

"If you were trying to hide a body?" Tony questioned. "Where would you hide it? Say, in a yacht like this?"

Nat looked around, analyzing as many parts of the yacht as possible before she gave him an answer. "If I was in a different environment, then I would make my target look like they died via accident. But if I was trying to hide a body specifically, then I would hide them somewhere that most people would overlook."

"In plain sight?"

"In plain sight."

"Okay, where around this yacht is in plain sight?"

"I would cut his body up into pieces before putting them into food containers and into the fridge. I'm not a cannibal but I am practical."

Tony heads over to the fridge and picks it back up and returns it to its original spot. He opens the fridge and some food containers fall out onto the ground. He picks one up and looks inside. Nothing but corn inside. "You can turn meat into a vegetable unless you're brain dead."

"Then again, she's not trying to hide the body, she wants the body to be found by us so we have to think like us."

Tony put the corn back before he faced his sister. "I would hide it in plain sight like you would."

"But we're on a yacht. The only place where you could hide a body in plain sight is if…." Her eyes widen and she rolls them with a combination of annoyance and relief. "I've got an idea. We're looking at this wrong." She pulls out her cell phone and dials up a number. "The cell phone still has a signal, all we have to do is call." She puts the phone to her ear and waits.

"And if she wants us to find the phone, it won't be on vibrate."

A jingling plays softly. The two siblings remain calm and listen to try and find the source.

"You hear that?" Nat asked.

"I can't hear anything," Tony answered.

She follows the source of the sound above them, in the wooden ceiling. Nat closes the phone and gets a boost from her brother. She takes out a knife and cuts a rectangle around the ceiling.

A body breaks through and lands on Nat and Tony. Nat falls to the ground, right on her side and breaks open the stitches to her unhealable wound. She winces in pain before sitting up on her knees and putting pressure.

Her eyes draw to the corpse that fell to the ground with the skin peeling off. It looked to be in the early stages of rigor mortis as his body looked as stiff as a door when Tony turned him over onto its back.

"You okay?" Tony asks.

"Yeah." She unzips her catsuit to see blood painted on the inside. "Hand me something to close this up." She peels off her catsuit from the shoulders down to her waist and uses a towel that Tony handed her to put pressure on. She was dressed in a muscle shirt but Tony still felt awkward being around his half-naked sister.

"His stomach was cut open," she noticed. "There's stitches. Someone cut him open then stitched him back up."

"The only time you cut someone open and stitch them back up is when you put you remove something from them."

"Or put something inside."

Tony takes out a switchblade and cuts open the stomach. He was half-expecting guts to spill out but that wasn't the case. The body had been as hollow as a shotgun shell except for something rectangular inside. He pulls the rectangle-shaped object out and holds it out to Nat.

"A camera?" Nat studies it. "A camera, Rappacini put that in there. There has to be a tape in there."

Tony checks. "There isn't." He looks back into the hollow stomach. He pulls something out: A cassette labeled 'Flower'. "If this is anything like the _Saw_ movies, we better watch it and I doubt that it has anything to do with actual flowers." He puts the cassette in and sits next to Nat so they could watch together.

The video opened with static before it dissolved into a light green colored screen. The camera is pulled back and turns around approximately ninety-degree to aim at a door with something written above it. The camera moves forward and the door is pushed open.

A hallway surrounded by prison bars was present and the camera kept moving forward until it stopped at another door. Inside this room was an office desk with a computer. The camera moves over to the computer and the screen turns on. The camera lowers down, indicating that someone is sitting down in a chair. The screen is turned on and an encrypted password is typed in and the screen turns black before lighting up a mountain background. A web page was opened and popped up an image of a flower. Eventually, the camera turns around, doing a one-eighty, and faces the wall.

There was a rectangular outline in the wall like a hidden safe and it opened up after a combination of approximately four numbers were punched in. The cameraman opens up the safe all the way and turns on the flashlight setting.

"What is that?" Nat asked as if Tony had the answer. His answer was a shrug.

A hand with a leather glove reached in and took out a red canister with a biohazard symbol in the center. The next thing that was pulled out was a vial with a label that had been covered with duct tape. After that, the camera turned around and faced the cameraman.

Camerawoman.

Monica Rappacini with a Photostatic Veil of Natasha Romanoff's face. After that, the camera cuts out.

"Rappacini, like always, she wanted us to find it." She was starting to get annoyed with how everything seems to have fallen in like some kind of movie plot and Rappacini was the writer.

Tony looked up from the camera. "Rappacini, clear as day, is the culprit." He rewinds the video to the beginning. He pauses before the camera goes through the door with the words above the door. "Norco."

"Norco?" Nat arched her brows. "Weird name for a prison."

"It's not a prison, it's a mental asylum. Perfect place to stash a biochemical weapon."

"Is Norco close?"

"It's in the state of Florida, but it's been abandoned for over three years. Maybe it's Rappacini's hideout."

"She wanted us to find this tape so we knew where the biochemical weapon would be. She took out the canister and vial to let us know where it is." She gets up and fixes her catsuit. "We have to get to this Norco asylum and find the biochemical weapon. If we can get a concentrated dose, it would be more beneficial for FitzSimmons to do their magic with it."

"Then let's get a move on."


	13. Seeing With Different Eyes

Nat and Tony arrived at Norco Asylum. The asylum was a few miles off Bleecker Canal and had no residential buildings within two miles. It looked to have been abandoned for at least a year at the very least. There was graffiti of various arts on the wall and a chain on the front door. The two siblings checked around for any signs of security guards before they slipped through the front door without even breaking the chains. The inside of the building was dark and had a gray lighting tone with rubble on the ground and voices echoed off the wall as they spoke. "This is a perfect place to hide a biochemical weapon."

While it did take them a while, they eventually found the room, deduced the combination, and opened the safe.

The red canister was pulled out first and read aloud by Nat. "Midnight Oil? A chemical agent that was used as a combat drug during the war in Afghanistan?"

Tony pulled out the vial. "Carrion, as in the Carrion Virus. The Carrion Virus is dormant but it is bloodborne and has no effects on the human body as recorded."

"But Rappacini found a way to turn these harmless devices into a biochemical weapon." She looks inside the safe and finds another cassette. It was labeled 'Flower Experiment' and she doubted it had anything to do with smelling lilies. "Play this."

Tony pushes the tape in and presses play.

* * *

_February 13, 2012_

_A tall man with gray hair and sideburns looked directly into the camera._

"_Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Harold Daze and I am in charge of Project: Flower. I am proud to announce with my esteemed colleagues that Advanced Idea Mechanics has designed a revolutionary device that will put an end to wars. Why send soldiers to fight a war when you can a simple canister like this?" He sits in the chair, the same chair in the room with them. He holds up a red canister. "This is a combat drug called Midnight Oil and this," he shows the vial. "Is the Carrion Virus. Individually, these two substances are no threat but combined, these two can become lethal."_

_He gets out of his chair and walks out of the room, the cameraman following._

"_The Carrion Virus lays dormant with the human brain where our primitive state lays dormant. It remains dormant but can't do anything beyond that. However, the Carrion Virus is reactive with Midnight Oil due to its being a counterpart to an adrenaline shot except for the brain. It is Midnight Oil that can unleash the full potential of the Carrion Virus."_

_The scientist opens up a door and leads the cameraman into a room with a large window on the wall. It looked like an experimentation room and the window looked to be bulletproof._

"_This is a gas chamber," he stated like a teacher to a student. "Nothing escapes from this glass box." He heads over to a monitor and presses a red button._

_The camera gets an angle of four people inside in casual clothing, indicating that they were random civilians. A colorless cloud of smoke rose from their feet and the four civilians began twitching. It was barely noticeable at first before they shook their bodies like they were being bitten everywhere by insects._

_One of the civilians grabbed the nearest person beside them and smashed their heads into the wall. Another civilian did this to another before the two turned on each other. They tackled each other to the floor while they were trying to rip out their throats. Only one succeeded while the other died. Eventually, the victor tore out its own throat before falling dead to the ground._

_The smoke slowly dissipated into thin air. _

* * *

"Oh my god," Nat gasped. "This is Flower; a hallucinogenic biochemical weapon."

"Drives people to insanity and forces them to kill each other. This is Rappaccini's endgame."

Nat turned around and pounded her fists into the desk. "I can't believe she's going to drive Washington D.C. to insanity." She squeezes her eyes shut before sitting down in the chair and rests her head in her hand. "That video was filmed five years ago. Rappaccini must've been part of that project, along with Daze, Wiles, and Brannex."

"Why is she killing them though?"

"Because she wants glory for herself. Either that or so they won't squeal her out." She gets out of her chair and runs down the hallway and into the gas chamber room. Not a single ounce of blood within the room. "This is where they did the experiments."

Nat fell to her knees and sighed calmly. She closed her eyes and lowered her head to the ground. Then, came the voice whispering in her head. It sounded like multiple people whispering in a soft voice. They were talking over each other but Nat displayed no reactions beyond sadness from the Flower experiment.

_Do it…_

Nat's head snaps up. She hears her brother say something but his voice is eventually drowned out. Most likely out of instinct, he heard looks down at her hip holster. There was a knife.

_Take it…_

She grabs the knife and slowly draws it out. She waves it in front of her face and licks her lips.

_Slash…_

Like in a trance, she puts the knife to her throat.

"NO!"

Tony shoves Nat away. Nat stumbles forward and has no time to react before she is launched into a generator and there was still power flowing through the cables.

Nat accidentally stepped in a puddle of black liquid as the blade punches into the cables and shocks Nat.

Nat screams in agony as she feels her insides fry and smoke leave her skin like a branch burning in a bonfire. She cries out before falls to the ground and convulses before stifling into a motionless body with the heart ceasing to beat.

"Nat," Tony cried. He dives to his knees and pushes both hands down on her chest. Her body twitches with every pump and he lifts the mask up to give her mouth-to-mouth. "Don't die on me! Sister!" He speeds up on the chest compressions until each chest compression was almost instantaneous. "You can't die like this. I can't kill the legendary Black Widow, let alone my sister!"

He raises his hand in the air and pounds it into her heart. That seemed to be the trick.

Nat's eyes burst open and she gasps deeply for air. She is pulled into a sitting position and she takes in deep breaths before looking around like a newborn baby. "Rappaccini," she said. "We have to find her."

"I just killed you," Tony exclaimed as he pulled the mask back in place. "Show some remorse for scaring the living crap out of me!"

"Harry Daze poisoned these people in the gas chamber," Nat said as if she was trying to recount what happened before her brief death. "Rappaccini showed us a video of Harry Daze gassing these people with Flower."

Even with his mask on, he expressed a confused look at his deluded sister who just returned from the dead. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Did you not see the video," Tony pointed out like it was the most obvious thing in the room. "It wasn't Harry Daze who killed these people in the gas chamber, it was Rappaccini."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Flower," Tony shouted. "Flower is a hallucinogenic bioweapon. We have to call Homeland Security and alert them."

That's when Nat's eyes widen in panic. "Not Homeland Security, they can't help."

"Why not?"

_Oh my god, how dense can he be? _"Rappacini is framing me, remember? She's drawing me away? Haven't you seen the news lately?"

"You're not on Homeland Security's hit list," Tony said suddenly. "You're not even on the police's hit list."

Now Nat truly was confused.

"What are you talking about?"

It was the third time she asked that question.

Tony approached her and put both hands on her shoulders. "You are not being hunted by Homeland Security. I checked for your BOLO alerts and your face doesn't come up on the wanted papers."

Nat's eyes widened even more. She looked like a woman with no eyelids. "What are you talking about?" she repeated a fourth time. "Explain it in English because I saw my face on the news and my face, crystal clear, was on the watch out list."

"Are you listening to me?! You. Are. Not. Being hunted. By Homeland. SECURITY!" He snatches his hands off his shoulders. "What the hell gave you that idea? I looked up your face on every news station and BOLO alert, nothing even remotely resembling you is visible. Whatever you've been saying about being framed by Rappacini so Homeland Security can chase after you, total bullshit. You would've been caught eventually by Homeland Security because of our buddies down at the police station would've sold us out."

He moves his face closer to hers but makes sure to do it in a gentle way to reassure her that she was no threat. "I love you, Nat. I really do, but you've gone crazy. I trusted you when you said that Homeland Security was after you but do you trust yourself? Do you trust what has really been happening around you? Rappacini may be a real threat, but ask yourself what it is you believe before you start flying halfway across the States looking for answers."

_D.C. to Florida isn't even halfway across the States._

Nat turns her back to him and she crouches down like she needed to throw up. She takes in the new piece of information that her brother has told her. Homeland Security wasn't after her, why was that? She saw on the news report and she saw BOLO alerts after her. Everything seemed so surreal when she saw…

_Wait a second._

Nat looks up and suddenly everything fell right into place. She turns to her brother and points at him. "What did you say on the boat about Daze's body?"

"He looks like he's been dead for a whole year. I wasn't sure you heard because when I answered, you looked like you hadn't even heard it."

"Where did you hear the cell phone ringing?"

"Are you kidding me? I didn't even hear a cell phone ring on that yacht. The battery should've been dead after a year."

"And you said that my face wasn't on the news or BOLO alerts?"

"No."

"Then that means…" She snapped her fingers as if trying to find the answer when she already knew what it was. Once she realized what was going on, it made her realize that she was the star of a fictional mystery movie that had a twist the size of _The Sixth Sense._

"It was all in my head." She whispered it to herself before he looked over to Tony and repeated. "Everything that has happened to me, the biochemical threat, everything else, it was all in my head. This entire time...I was hypnotized!"

Tony chuckles and puts his hands on his hips. "I have to say, it does make sense."

"What makes sense is that everything that has happened is like some kind of linear plot sequence for a movie. Like someone hypnotized me into coming all the way here to Florida so I could get away from D.C." She looked down at the knife that was still implanted in the cables of the generator. "I was probably supposed to die by cutting my own throat out of grief."

"If that was the case, then why would somebody want you far away from D.C.?"

Nat could only come to one conclusion and it was the only one that made sense. "Because they wanted me far out of arm's reach when they unleash Flower upon Washington D.C. They want my fingerprints on every base of operation that they've operated in so when the biochemical threat does happen, 'Natalie Rushman' is the primary suspect."

"That was a real thing that actually happened," Tony said to reassure his sister. "The date was February 13, 2017, one year ago actually, not whatever date in your mind that you thought it said. I was also doing some background research on Rappaccini's colleagues and they all died one year ago exactly. Wiles did indeed die via a needle to the neck and Brannxe just as you described him to die, except one year ago."

"That means that there is someone with a plot with Flower. They did indeed want me far away from Washington D.C. And when I broke out my false IDs in your home, there was no hole in the wall aside from the one I punched to get them out. And I used the name Natalie Rushman when I went undercover during that Super-Adaptoid mission one year ago."

"So if these people died one year ago, it was after your encounter with Super-Adaptoid. Someone was watching you and stole the false identity that you used and used a Photostatic Veil to steal your face. It makes sense."

"How could I have been hypnotized though? I must've been hypnotized in a very odd fashion to be completing all these steps like a game of hopscotch. Someone is really talented in their skills as a hypnotist."

Tony crosses his arms with a pensive sigh. "Or just fanatical enough to hypnotize your idol's sister to fall right into a scripted plot."

"What?"


	14. The Result of a Wounded Heart

It suddenly felt weird that Nat was walking down an airport terminal without that paranoia that someone was after her. It felt like a great paranoid, stiffened, rigor mortis weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Tony, he was being looked at because of his hoodie and skull mask.

Nat moved from the terminal and out into the parking lot, heading to her car and resting her forearms on the top. She lets out a pensive as her eyes survey the parking lot. The sun was setting.

Tony gently grabbed his sister's shoulder. "Getting lost in trance, don't."

"I'm sorry," Nat said half-heartedly as she turned towards her brother. "I just spent an entire week believing that I've been hunted by Homeland Security, only to figure out that I was in a red herring. You'd be feeling weightless if you were me."

"I'm not you, thankfully. But we can't stop enjoying the peace yet. Where could Rose and Rappaccini be?"

Nat opened her car door and sat in the driver's seat. She took off when Tony was situated in.

"We can't do anything," Nat said regretfully. "If those two planned on spreading Flower, then they would've had to infect foods with the virus. How they're going to infect people with the gas is a different story."

"The best way to spread a chemical weapon is to do it in a large crowd of people. I would say Time Square if I was in New York."

Nat turns a corner but stays focused. "The only place large enough for a big crowd is the Washington Monument. But even so, they have no way of knowing which virus carriers are present. And in the Washington Monument, the people don't stay together in large groups."

"Unless she draws a crowd. Like Joker did on _Batman_ with the money parade."

"In this day and age, Tony, you have to be original. Assuming they spent months or even a year spreading the virus, it is bloodborne and bloodborne viruses don't spread far."

"Unless a large food company like Chef Boyardee is contaminated with the virus. Since it's a dormant virus, it would be able to evade detection."

Nat pulls up at a red light. "I don't know much about Rappaccini, but I can tell she is a strategically planned opportunist. She's not going to wait for a large crowd to appear, she'll make it."

"So she could do something like giving away free money."

"Nothing can be ruled out but the money would be too suspicious. If she wants Flower to work, then she would need a large crowd of people in a situation that she can control. She would need to infect those people either by contaminating the food or through other means. If she wants the chemical gas to spread, it would have to be in the same area with the same people."

"Sounds like the best place to gas someone would be a parade or festival."

"But are there any festivals going on?" She drove when the light turned green.

She drove as fast as she could before she pulled into the neighborhood. They wasted no time knocking on the door and reuniting with FitzSimmons, Mercedes, and Jeanne.

"Daddy!" Jeanne ran and hugged her father. "How was North Carolina and Miami?"

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Mercedes asked Nat.

"We found out that Rappaccini is indeed a real person and her accomplice is a hypnotist."

"A hypnotist?" she gasped. "You've been hypnotized this entire time? How do we know that this isn't part of the hypnosis?"

"My heart stopped beating for Tony to save my life." She looks at FitzSimmons. "I need to know, are there any festivals or parades happening within the week?"

The two nerds stuttered and looked at each other nervously. Fitz answered: "There us Valentine's Day festival happening tomorrow."

_A festival, that's a good start._ "What is going to be at this festival? Food, water, pre-cooked meals?'

"All of the above."

Simmons held up her hand like she had a question. "That, accompanied by live music and karaoke. It'll mostly be live songs with live performances."

"Any balloons overhead?"

"It is a festival," FitzSimmons answered in unison.

"Then it's the perfect place to unleash Flower."

"Flower? FitzSimmons asked.

"Flower," said Tony.

"Flower?" Mercedes.

"Flower." Nat.

"Why do we keep saying flower?" Jeanne.

Nat broke the cycle of saying 'Flower' before it could continue until the end of time. "It's a hallucinogenic biochemical weapon. It's a mixture of the Carrion Virus and Midnight Oil. It causes insanity."

The whole crowd gasped like a group of students.

"Both the Carrion Virus and Midnight Oil are harmless individually," Fitz said. "A festival would be the perfect place for an attack."

"But there are so many people there," Simmons pointed out. "The only thing I can think is if she contaminates the food."

"If she is doing this all by herself with no accomplices other than her Taskmaster copycat, it would be an all-day job."

"Not necessarily," Mercedes spoke up. "Usually, at festivals, they serve one type of food overall. If Rappaccini can find this source, all she needs is one dose of the virus. The water would be a good start as well as hot dogs, cotton candy, ice cream, anything kind of sweets that people would buy."

"She wouldn't have to poison every food stand," Tony said. "She would just need to contaminate the trucks delivering them."

"That problem has been solved," Nat said. "But what about the gas? Where could she store the gas?"

"In the balloon," Mercedes offered. "Most balloons at the festivals are blown up with helium. Midnight Oil is a colorless gas so all she would have to do is fill the helium tanks with midnight oil."

"What prevents them from deflating?"

"Unless," Tony began. "The chemical gas is above them so that way, it spreads without obstacles in its path. I would do it. I would contaminate the atmosphere."

Nat sat down and rubbed her head. She sighed. "If I was a Black Widow assassin on an assignment to use Flower on a large crowd of people in a festival, I would make sure that the chemical gas is stored somewhere safe then wait a minimum of a few hours before I release the gas."

"But where would you unleash the gas?"

"Somewhere that I can touch without being seen. Somewhere hidden in plain sight because I'm trying to gas people. I would use the balloons to store the gas or even keep them hidden in the water supply, like on _Batman Begins_ where the fear toxin is dumped into the water supply."

"But then they would need to vaporize the water supply to get it into the air."

"Then I would use a custom made water vaporizer that I designed and someone like Rappacini is capable of creating such a thing."

"What happens if you get infected by accident, then what would you do?"

Nat had no answer to that question. She immediately went into silent mode and thought of an answer. She wasn't a biochemist so she didn't know what the cure to this biochemical weapon was. "I'd wear a gas mask at all times so I wouldn't get infected."

"So, if Rappaccini is there, she could have a gas mask on her?"

"She wouldn't need one because the chances of her being infected with the Carrion Virus are extremely unlikely."

"Her and her accomplice."

"Yeah."

"So, we may need gas masks but what about a cure?" He turns to FitzSimmons and hopes for the best as he asks, "You think you two can synthesize a cure for tomorrow?"

"Of course," Fitz nodded. "But we still need a sample for that to happen."

"We've got concentrated samples." Tony reaches inside his hoodie and pulls out the red canister and the vial. He hands them to Fitz and Simmons respectively. "We need a cure, ASAP."

"We didn't win all those Nobel Prizes for nothing."

_Next prize you'll be winning is a Golden Raspberry award if you don't shut up and create a cure already._ Nat smiled to herself before she jumped out of the chair and turned to her brother. "There's no way we can detect any presence of Carrion or Midnight Oil, right?" Tony shook his head. "So that means looking for the source is the Carrion virus is useless as well as the source of Midnight OIl. Best we could do is find Rappaccini before she unleashes the gas."

"We're also going to need gas masks because we could be infected and not even know it." Tony touched his mask with his gloved hand. "I doubt this skull mask is going to cut it, however."

"You should evacuate Jeanne and get her as far away from here as possible."

"But I want to stay and help, Aunty Natty," Jeanne said before giving a sad puppy look.

Nat looked at Tony and Mercedes, expecting them to have an answer for their daughter.

"As dangerous as it is, we can't let you go with us," Mercedes kneeled. "We don't want you getting hurt by bad people."

"But I don't want to go," Jeanne cried. "You're my mommy and daddy."

That comment right there sent heartwarming signals in Nat's brain as and reminded her as to why she never killed children, even as an assassin.

"We could watch her," Simmons offered, "We like having her around. She can stay and be our assistant."

_You're using my niece as a substitute for a baby you're trying to have. I understand. I want children but since I haven't found the right man, Jeanne is compensation enough._

* * *

Monica Rappaccini sighed and looked at the mirror. She put on a pair of black leather gloves before she ran a hand over her cinnamon-colored skin. She pushes a comb down her dark and silky hair. She grabs a stick of red lipstick and smears it on her lips. She buttons up the remains of her shirt before putting on a blouse and sporting a smile. "You're a pretty girl, Monica."

It was time to score a victory. After being raised in a broken home with three older sisters that abused her daily while her single father did nothing to protect her, she was determined to prove her family wrong when they constantly called her a failure and smashed all her science awards. She already murdered her sisters one by one but her father was still alive. He had gotten a girlfriend recently and was heading to Valentine's Day festival. No way in hell was he going to survive. She dug up a grave for him and she was waiting for him to fall in.

Rappaccini heads into the living room, where several vials and red canisters laid afoot. She picks up a vial and takes out a small quantity via a syringe. She puts the syringe in her pocket before picking up a canister. She hides the canister in her jacket before walking out the door.

Washington D.C. was a great place. She loves the weather, the food, how much tension rises within because it's the country's capital, everything about it is perfect. The only thing that was missing was the fact that America overall disgusted her. A.I.M. stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics to the public but to her, it had a whole other meaning and she intended to exploit it.

A car pulls up to her as she walks on the sidewalk. She gets in the back before turning to the driver.

It's Rose, Taskmaster's biggest fan. "Where to, Rappaccini?"

"Valentine's Day Festival. I need to do a little more preparation to make sure everything is in order."

"Of course." Rose drove them to the festival.

"Is your radio working?" she asked her right-hand woman whom she met on a classified serial killer website. Rappaccini was a woman of resources but once those resources were useless, she would kill them. Rose was going to be no exception after Project: Flower was 'Rap-paccini'.

Rose touched her 1980s radio placed on her hip. "I've recorded all my orders on a tape while a secret frequency was on in the background. Like usual, if I mute the radio but keep changing signals to match the hidden frequencies, I can secretly hypnotize people into following a movie script, basically, without outright saying the hypnotism. It's what I did on Natasha Romanoff when she brought her niece to Baskin Robbins."

In some way, Rose was just like Rappaccini: They both came from broken families except Rose had it much worse.

When Rose was a little girl, she stayed in her room to hide from her abusive parents and mean older brother. She practiced techniques with her mind like meditating, which eventually evolved into hypnotizing people. It became difficult for her at first but she tried to tell her parents that she could hypnotize people and they beat the living crap out of her for falsely accusing her of lying. Then she went back to hiding in her closet, crying and wishing for their deaths.

During eight grade, she met Tony Masters. He was the only one who was nice to her and he even bestowed a kiss upon her cheek. She instantly fell in love with Tony that day. Wanting to start a new life, she hypnotized both of her parents into committing suicide but the psychological damage had been too severe. She feels emotions for no one but the only person who could possibly tame her was Taskmaster. He was the only one that she refused to hurt, hell, he was the only one that she may have genuinely loved. Rappaccini met her on a secret serial killer website and was impressed with her hypnotizing abilities. She took her in and Rose sees Rappaccini as the first person to actually want to work with her, but secretly despises Rappaccini because Rappaccini was only using her for her hypnotizing abilities. She was not stupid. As soon as this was done, Rappaccini was going to go and she would be reunited with the love of her life.

Rappaccini pulled out a security badge and used it to gain access to the festival. Rose was following her.

"I've spent two weeks making sure all the good that came in the trucks were 'purified' with Carrion," Rose said reluctantly. "I've been keeping tabs on Romanoff and my lover. She's in Miami if the hypnotism goes according to schedule.:

"Excellent," she praised her right-hand-woman. "She should be putting a blade to her throat at this time, correct?"

Rose nods.

"Good, now help me finalize our project."

And she did.

"Now that everything seems to have fallen into place, you, Rose, are going to play a very special role in Project: Flower starting tomorrow."

Rose's eyebrows arch and a smile forms. "Really?" She was like a little girl who was told by her mom that she was getting all the presents she wanted on her birthday.

Sadly, she never got presents on her birthday. It's been so long since she celebrated her birthday that she forgot her birthday. She forgot the one day of the year she was born. "What am I doing?"

"I need you to draw the biggest crowd you possibly could in your direction." She looks over to a staging area and points to the mic setup. "They are doing karaoke this year and you can use your hypnotizing skills to seduce a crowd."

"Anything," Rose said quickly, "Anything for Project: Flower."

"Once you've drawn in the crowd when it is at its peak, I will activate Project: Flower. I won't tell you what the signal is but you have to promise me that you'll trust me."

"I trust you."

If Rappacini was talking to someone that she didn't know, she would've killed Rose herself. Her father may have been an asshole, but he did bestow wise words to her. 'Trust those who carry a sword with you in battle, but be prepared to slash their throat when the battle is over'.

"Alright then, no gas mask is needed but once Project: Flower is spreading through the air, run as fast as you can. You don't want to get caught in the crosshairs between insane people, do you?"

"NO," Rose shook her head and dropped her smile. "I want to live long enough to see Taskmaster once again."

"If he sticks to the schedule, he should be back home from Hawaii four days after Project: Flower is a go. That way, you can do whatever you want with him. Nat should be dead, killing herself out of grief, and you will get to marry the love of your life."

"I-" she stopped herself from speaking anymore, realizing that she was going to spill the beans on seeing Taskmaster in South Carolina. She didn't want something so vital like Project: Flower to ruin something so vital like meeting Taskmaster (again) and getting the chance to truly fall in love with him.

_I won't let you hurt Taskmaster. I love Tony too much to let you hurt him. If Tony breaks up Project: Flower, then I will be there by his side. I will survive, I have to survive. I have to live. I've never lived for anyone before, my parents took my dignity from me but Tony gave it back by just being nice to me. If you think about separating me from this world before I can see Tony, I'll kill you._


	15. Cupid's Arrow

Day of the Valentine's Day Festival

It was planned out proficiently, if not perfectly. For both Natasha Romanoff's team and Monica Rappaccini and her partner.

Rose was up on stage, singing songs of romance to the crowd into the mic. She had a handheld radio attached to her hip and as she sang, she kept switching channels, essential to how to draw in large crowds of people to the stage. She was singing the song, _Stay,_ and the crowd was starting to fall in love with her voice. She sang like a princess with a voice that could dazzle any man. When she switched songs, she didn't miss any beat on switching channels on the radio.

"Don't be shy," Rappaccini spoke as she jumped in front of a crowd of kids, wearing face paint and had her hair dyed pink. "My name is Bonkers the Clown!" And what a clown she was with white face paint, red lines down her eyes, a big red nose that looked like a baseball painted red, and those giant yellow shoes that didn't look like they could fit even Bigfoot. She was wearing a striped shirt along with suspenders to keep her yellow pants from falling. She stood in front of a food cart that was selling ice cream. "Who wants a balloon?" she deadpanned unintentionally. She pulls out a red balloon and makes a wiener dog out of it, horribly. "I never did go to clown college so this will do." She hands it to a nonchalant four-year-old girl before turning to the ice cream cart.

Without even asking them, she hands out scoops of ice cream to the children and waves them goodbye. "Nobody is innocent," she mumbled under her breath. "Not even children."

_If they live for this hellhole of a country, then they will die in this hellhole of a country._

Rose switched to another song and sent subconscious signals into the crowd's brains, telling them to come closer and not worry about the smoke that was evaporating from the sewer grates beneath them. _That's not Midnight Oil, yet._

* * *

"I have a visual on Rose, how copy?"

Nat wore an oversized trench coat with earplugs in to prevent her from hearing the music. Even with earplugs in, she could still hear the music but it sounded like music playing against a pillow. She zips her trenchcoat up to prevent her catsuit from being spotted. She holds up her hand with the wristwatch and speaks into the hidden mic underneath the watch. "I copy, T. I see her."

"Can I shoot her?" Tony asked almost impatiently. "We could end everybody's trance right here."

"You're more than welcome to but it won't snap people out of their trances." She tried counting how many people were in the large crowd but quickly lost count. She hid behind a hot dog food cart and stalked Rose as she sang her next song. "Are you sure the woman on the stage is the one who hypnotized me?"

"She said she was my biggest fan and I will never forget the face of my biggest fan."

_Your biggest fan is about to poison Washington D.C. and she hypnotized me. Why can't fans just ask for autographs nowadays?_ "Do not engage because we need her to snap these people out of the trances."

"How did you snap out of your trance?"

"I was electrocuted and you brought me back to life with CPR. We won't have enough time to kill and then bring back everybody. We need Rose alive at all costs, Rappaccini on the other hand, she's lost the right to live."

"I'll take Rose, you look for Rappaccini."

"You don't have to tell me twice."

Nat looks around the festival, passing through small groups of people and takes out a camera that photographers use for photographing nature and takes pictures. She didn't know what Rappaccini truly looked like but if the false file was true, then she was a five-foot-one Hispanic woman with dark silky hair. Chances are she'll be handing out food to spread the virus. She took pictures of all the food carts that she saw before she spoke into her watch mic.

"Mercedes, how're the sewers smelling down there?"

"Shit, shit, and shit."

Mercedes Mason-Masters had volunteered for this mission to seek out the Midnight Oil in the sewer system as the waterline underneath the festival seemed like the most feasible place to dump a chemical part to a biochemical weapon. She lit up a flashlight and poked a hole in one of the pipes. She took a sample of water and crushed the sample in the same vial. The vial in the liquid was green, indicating that this water had traces of Midnight Oil within. "It's confirmed, the Midnight Oil is in the water supply system."

"Can you get it out?"

"Negative. The fumes in here are rising out the sewer system but not fumes from Midnight Oil. My guess is they probably spent weeks dumping Midnight Oil into the water system."

"If that's the case, then they must have some kind of weapon to vaporize the water supply. A detonator but we're going to need to trace the detonator's signal."

"Fitz is working on the cure, call Simmons and have her trace the signal."

Nat looked over at Nat as she sat down at a small cafe table. She holds up her camera and starts taking pictures of Rose. After zooming in, she spots something attached to her hip. At first, it looked like a device used on microphones but a closer look showed that it appeared to be a small handheld radio from the 1980s. She was constantly pushing buttons as she sang like she was playing the guitar with one hand. "Interesting," Nat smirks. "I was wondering how you would've hypnotized so many people at once." She called in Tony and alerted him to the radio.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"She must be sending special frequencies through the music, which would widen and expand her range of hypnotism. That pale girl that hypnotized me at Baskin Robbins, it was indeed Rose. She must've sent out silent frequencies to hypnotize me without saying the words. Whatever you do, do not listen to her singing voice or you'll fall in a trance. That goes double for the frequency."

Rappaccini pulled out a 1990s cellular phone and punched in a few numbers. Looking inside the food cart to find that she is out of ice cream, she abandons the cart and sheds out of her clown clothing. She wipes the facepaint off and gets rid of her clothes. Underneath her clown outfit were black cargo pants, desert combat boots, a blue buttoned-up shirt, and green flannel. She went into the bathroom to wash the dye out of her hair and came out after dying it white blonde.

_Probably unnecessary but no chances can be taken._

She walks into the crowd, unworried of the risk of being hypnotized. Before the show, Rose had hypnotized Rappaccini into not being hypnotized and to refuse to follow any orders that she gives.

"I see her!" Nat almost yelled into her wristwatch as she spotted Rappaccini walking through the crowd after coming out of the bathroom.

_I know it's her, it has to be. Who goes into the bathroom with pink hair before coming out with white-blonde hair that doesn't even look natural_?

She takes as many pictures as she could before reviewing one of them. Her photographic memory aided her in confirming that this woman had the same face as the one in the A.I.M. files. She spots her target again before alerting Tony on her wristwatch. "I see Rappaccini." She jumps out of her seat and pursues Rappaccini.

The music became louder like the volume dial was being turned as she got closer and her vision was starting to blur up. "Oh shit," she curses before backing away. She realized that the closer she got to the stage, the louder the music got and broke through her earplugs. "I can't get close without getting hypnotized."

She heads back to her original position before she called in Simmons. "Jemma, I found Rappaccini!"

"That's good news dear," Simmons replied. "What do you need? Can you take her out?"

"I can't," Nat said. "Not without the risk of being hypnotized."

"Can Tony take him out?"

"It doesn't matter, I need you to trace a signal. Rose is sending hidden frequencies through the music via radio on her hip. I need to know where the source is coming from. I got to prevent more people from being hypnotized."

"I'm tracing it right now."

Rose's latest song finally came to an end and Rappaccini saw her chance to begin Project: Flower.

Rose took the mic and spoke just moments after the last song ended.

Her voice booms in the mic as she speaks. "And now, folks, it's time for the moment we've all been waiting for." She paused to scan the crowd as it calmed down. The crowd had their eyes emotionless and had hollow looks on their faces. Some of them were even drooling. How sad it was that all these people were infected with the Carrion Virus and about to be crazed. "How many of you came to this festival because you were in love with someone? A few people. You know why people cherish this day because this is the day when we get stuck with Cupid's arrow. But one thing I don't understand is where is Cupid if he's supposed to be the god of love?" She drops her cheerful expression to an emotionless one. She restored her cheerful face when she answered with hysterical laughter: "He's at home, smoking his pot!"

Like robots, they laughed along with her but remained standing still.

Rappaccini even cracked a smile before she spotted something very eye-opening in the crowd.

Natasha Romanoff.

_That...little...bitch._ It took all her willpower to just say that in her head as she clenched her knuckles. _That fire crotch bitch ruined everything. That three-dollar slut!_ She grabbed Rose by the shoulder and whispered her newfound knowledge. Rose spotted Nat at the cafe table and was more ecstatic then angered.

"That means Tony is here!"

"It means we have to move ahead on schedule." She grabbed the mic from Rose. "Hello, ladies, gentlemen, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, lovers. I know what you're thinking, 'who is this woman'? I'm no one special, just a lady with a microphone in hand."

Nat saw her chance and made a run for it, knowing that Rappaccini had seen her as well.

"But I'm also a woman of vision." Rappaccini grabbed Rose's radio and pushed a few buttons before yanking the antenna to its full length. She wraps Rose's hands tight around the radio. "You see, my name is Natalie Rushman."

The real 'Natalie Rusman' froze upon hearing her name echo throughout the mic but didn't stay frozen for too long.

"I used to work for Advanced Idea Mechanics but what most people don't seem to realize is that A.I.M stands for much more than that. There is a deeper meaning behind the acronym and we did promise a reward for anyone to correctly answer it. So far, we've had no answers and that's just fine with me. But it is time for us to rehabilitate America at its core with a taste of its own medicine. As a wise man once said, 'You better leave while you still can because, like the acronym for A.I.M. stands for, America Is Mad.'"

She laughs with puffs of air in between before patting Rose on the back. "Mist it up, Rose."

Rose holds up the radio and presses-

It shoots out of her hand from gunfire from an unknown location. She ducks down and puts her hands over her head.

Tony was positioned in a tree and had an M21 sniper rifle aimed at the detonator. "Consider yourself lucky, Rose."

Rappaccini thought two steps ahead and pushed the button on the detonator behind her back and put on a gas mask.

_America Is Mad._


	16. AIM: Rappaccini and Rose

"Gas masks!" Nat quickly put on one and ran off into the crowd as mist engulfed her in. As shown in the video, the gas was driving people to insanity but the sad part was that none of the people who have been hypnotized even bothered to scream in pain. They just snapped at each other and started clawing at one another like a pack of panthers over a gazelle.

"Let's go," Rappaccini said. She didn't need a gas mask on and neither did Rose. They jumped into the crowd and started shooting anyone who tried to attack them. "Victory could not have tasted any sweeter than it already does, Rose."

"But what about Taskmaster?" Rose almost cried. She thought of her idol and imagined him defenseless in a crowd of insane people. She knew without even putting too much thought into it that Taskmaster was here and he was the one who shot the fake detonator in her hand.

"Start worrying about yourself," she scolded her right-hand-woman, "Taskmaster is an enemy. Both Taskmaster and Natasha Romanoff are here."

Rose gasped and stuttered in her speech. "What? How? I hypnotized her."

_I thought you just saw her._ "Rose, you don't have any superpowers. You're just someone who can hypnotize people. You're a serial killer and a monster but fallible. Of course, someone is going to break through hypnotism. I just hoped that it wasn't going to be Nat Romanoff. Not this early at least."

A battle cry was heard and a fist plowed Rappaccini in the face. She stumbles back and falls into the crowd. One of the insane people bit Rappaccini in the shoulder. Rose pulled out her gun and shot this man but it was already too late.

Rappaccini grabbed her shoulder and looked at her wound. Just a bite mark with blood gushing through her wounds in small volumes. She looks to where she was standing previously and her eyes lit up with anticipation as she saw Nat Romanoff in a gas mask. "You were supposed to die."

"I did die," Nat spoke, her voice muffled by the gas mask. "I died and came back to life." She punches Rappaccini across the face before throwing her into the crowd.

Rose kicks Nat in the face and pushes her back. She aims the gun up but Nat kicks the gun with her feet and uppercuts Rose in the jaw with her foot.

Rose put up a fight and shoved Nat back before attacking her.

Blows and kicks were exchanged but each one held their own. Each punch was delivered with as much effort put forth, nothing held back. When Rose ducked and Nat punched an insane man out, she slipped into the crowd and out of sight.

Rose took out a spare knife and used it to swing across Nat's face. Nat jerked her head back and stepped back to analyze her opponent's fighting style.

Without a doubt, Rose has had real combat experience. She didn't know much about the female serial killer but she knew enough to copy down Nat's moves to perfection.

Nat moves across the crowd before taking out her own knife. Rose copies her to the exact detail. Nat holds her knife hand high above her head like she was doing a pull-up, Rose was copying her.

_What, she's copying me down to the exact detail. It's almost like she is Taskmaster 2.0_.

Nat puts her hand down and grips it with both hands. Rose follows this motion exactly like she was a mirror.

_Down to the perfect-_

"Detail?" Rose said.

_What, she can read my mind?_

"No, I can't read your mind," Rose said.

_Oh my god, she can read my mind. Unless…_

"Let's dance," Both Rose and Nat said at the same time.

Nat's eyes widened and she almost forgot to breathe before Rose took the knife and put the tip of the blade to her throat. Like she was a puppet, Nat followed along.

"Take the knife, Widow," Rose said and Nat copied.

_She hypnotized me. This entire time, I was hypnotized into copying what she does. Not a single motion since I fought her had been on my own free will. No wonder I was slacking off._

"The throat is a good place to start. Let's see some blood, Widow," Rose ordered.

"No," she spat. Unfortunately, Nat couldn't resist and with light pressure, dragged the tip of the blade across her throat.

"Do it!" Rose cheered.

Tony jumped out of the tree and shouldered his sniper rifle. He put on a gas mask and called Nat.

From behind, he kicked Rose in the back and sent her flying forward. Nat is also moving forward like she was pushed because she was still under the copy trance. By accident, the knife buries into Rose's shoulder and she gasps in pain.

Rose grabs her shoulder and cries in pain. She turns around to meet her unmaker, Taskmaster. The pain suddenly became less painful as she moved forward and reached a hand out towards her soulmate... "Sometimes," she gasped. "Sometimes…" she gasped again. "Sometimes...I can almost….hear myself….trying to….get out." Unexpectedly, she delivers a kiss upon the mouth area of Taskmaster's mouth.

Taskmaster doesn't seem to oppose or even attempt to reject this kiss because this kiss could be the only thing that calms Rose down.

* * *

With FitzSimmons and Jeanne

The aerial firefighting plane that had the water replaced with the cure had been flying overhead. The pilot was Simmons while Fitz and Jeanne were in the back. Simmons steadied the plane while Fitz opened the back door and looked down at the city five thousand feet below them.

"What's going on, Uncle Leo?" Jeanne asked. She was strapped down in a seat with her seatbelt strapped as tight as a noose.

"We're going to be dropping the Flower Killer onto the city." He kept a straight face even when he saw mist spread all over the Washington Monument and hid the crowd from sight. "Simmons, take us back around."

"Just get the drop ready!" Simmons said. "Pulling around."

Fitz clutched the nearest bar to him and held tightly as the plane turned clockwise. He held up a detonator and turned off the safety. Just one click of the button and a couple of thousand pounds of water that had been heavily contaminated with the cure to Flower, the Flower Killer, will be dropping on the Washington Monument. No need to inject each person one by one with the serum, all they needed was to spread the cure in mist form and everything should return to the status quo in only ten minutes or so. They had more than enough to drop on the country's capital at least three times in a row, which may be the case until Mercedes can find the source of what was going the water to evaporate. "Three, two, one!"

* * *

Nineteen thousand pounds of water came raining down from above and striking the poor city in a mountain of water. It was like a giant bag filled with water had exploded on them and a tsunami came at them like in that movie _The Day After Tomorrow_ except on a slightly less fatal scale.

Nat is hit with the water. As soon as she comprehends what's going on, she slips and falls on her slide. She fell right onto a kid who had gone mad. He bit into her side and caused Nat to gasp in pain. She pushes the kid away and looks at her bite mark. It didn't penetrate through her skin but it felt like her stitches were once again open. She decided that now was not the time to check and continued running in the path after Rappaccini. She steals one glance at the sky and sees the aerial firefighting airplane taking off and the mist slowly starts to fade away, the crowd violence slowly dying out.

She gives the plane a thumbs up. "Good job guys."

Rose pushed herself up from that sudden attack from above and coughed. "You've got to be kidding me," she cried like a little girl. "I hate getting wet!"

"That makes two of us."

"Taskmaster," Rose said. "Please, get this knife out of me!"

Taskmaster did indeed yank the non-fatal knife out of her shoulder as fast as he could before he grabbed Rose by the throat and started choking her.

"I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to answer honestly." He holds her up and puts his mouth to her ear. "What did the detonator set off?"

She cringed at the warm feeling of his breath, despite wearing a mask. She licked her lips and mustered enough courage to look him in the eyes of his skull mask. If she wasn't careful with what she said, that skull mask could become the Grim Reaper. "It sets off a device that Rappaccini set up to vaporize the water supply in the sewers. I can take you there?"

"That would be very helpful indeed," Tony said. "Tell me all about this water vaping device and I need to know how many more there are. Someone like Rappaccini doesn't plane for just one target, she always thinks three steps ahead, right?" He paused to look around. "Your plan has failed. You're not going to be making America mad anymore."

"I don't care about America," Rose said quietly. "I did all this for you, Tony. I really wanted to show you that I was your biggest fan."

"By poisoning America with a biochemical weapon?" He squeezes tighter on her throat.

"I'm sorry," she choked. "Please don't kill me. I'm really sorry!"

Tony contemplated his actions before he let her fall to the ground. "I have a teammate hanging out in the sewers and she says that Flower is in the town's main water supply. She must've dispensed it into the water supply somewhere. Tell me where and maybe I'll give you an autograph."

A wide smile instantly formed on her face. "Really?!"

* * *

Rappaccini had fallen when the water hit and she barely managed to catch her head before it was bashed against the street. She wasn't out of the woods yet because there was a car blinded by the dissipating mist and swerved to avoid her.

"Learn how to drive you goddamn women driver!" She quickly sprints off, running down the road.

Nat was almost run over by the car but in the heat of the moment, she jumps as high as her legs would allow it and she missed the car by half an inch. She lands on her feet and continues to run after Rappaccini. When she was within range, she pulled her pistol out and aimed it for her back. She pulled the trigger and watched Rappaccini fall to the ground.

"You little bitch," Rappaccini groaned as she picked herself up. "I expected you to aim high and _not_ hit me in the bulletproof vest."

"What makes you think it was my goal to kill you," Nat said to herself. "I was aiming for your collarbone." She sprints for it as Rappaccini is on the ground. She is coming up on the injured woman. She crashes into her like a bullet to the wall and shoves her with such force to the ground like she was about to kill her with her bare hands.

Nat was on top of her and gripped Rappaccini's temples. "Never say die, right?"

Rappaccini gasps for air, the eyes rolling to the back of her skull as she struggled to maintain consciousness. Her hand travels down to her pocket where she had the detonator and she pushed a second button.

A manhole cover flies up into the air and hits Nat on the back. Nat yelps in pain and falls forward, giving Rappaccini time to run. Nat was about to chase after her once more until she realized that she could see clearly with her left eye. She realized with horror as the mist came that her gas mask had its left eye cracked open and had been compromised. "Fuck!"

She takes in a deep breath before chasing after the Rappaccini with only one breath of air. As Rappaccini moved, the more water pipes from below began to vaporize. It was like she was some kind of ghost who made the lights flicker on and off except with water.

Nat finally let out a breath of air before she yanked off her gas mask, seeing it as dead weight now. The vaporizing mist was spreading down her path and causing cars to crash as a result but she remained persistent. "Rappaccini, come back here. You coward!"

Rappaccini turned a corner into an alley where the pipes continued to vaporize. The manhole cover that her target ran overshot up into the air and sprayed smoke out. Nat had to hold her breath and jump over. "It's going to take more than that to stop me."

Rappaccini jumps over a fence and out of sight.

Nat jumps over the same fence but when she gets on the other side, a car swerves out of control and was about to hit Nat with the grille.

For only a split second to react, Nat takes out her pistol and shoots at the window, aiming for in between the driver and passenger's seat. With only one bullet, the glass shatters and she dives headfirst through in one fluid motion. She rotates her body so she would fly between the seats and shoot out the window in the back as well.

The car slammed into the wall but Nat was already on the other side and in a kneeling position. "Wish I got that on camera." Without breaking from her position, she searches for Rappaccini, looking specifically for a woman running. If memory serves her right, wherever this woman ran, the subterranean water would vaporize. It had to be the detonator.

It was Rappaccini's father's car who almost hit Nat had she not shot the window and dived for it. He perished in the crash along with his girlfriend.

Rappaccini observed this detail from afar and made clicking sounds with her tongue like she was trying to sing a song differently. "Goody, father," she whispered. "Die, die, and continue to die until you've reached Hell."

_I have to get that detonator._

She calls in Mercedes as she runs, pulling the shirt under her catsuit up to cover her mouth and nose. "Mercedes, progress report?"

Mercedes breathed heavily through her gas mask. "It's not a detonator, not in an explosive way. There is some kind of signal that is causing the water to vaporize. Most likely some kind of detonator that is emitting forced microwaves. Like a Directed-energy weapons sourced detonator. Which means…"

"Wherever Rappaccini goes, the water vaporizes. She is going somewhere with that microwave emitter. I'll hunt her the entire way there if I have to."


	17. Family: Mercedes and Jeanne

Rand Enterprises Chemical Plant

It took about twenty minutes of running and outwitting, but Rappaccini made it inside the Rand Enterprises Chemical Plant factory, taking the stairs. She had to trick Nat into running off in the wrong direction before she doubled back and made way for the chemical plant, which was only several miles away from Washington Monument. It had about four stories high and almost a hundred steps to climb to get to the top. She climbs up the stairs on the inside and when she makes it to one floor, she spots a group of employees and workers in orange coughing and covering their faces with rags, most likely from the fumes that were being evaporated due to Rappaccini's detonator. The employees and workers fell to their knees and started retching.

_The fumes in this place. I can't handle it nor control my makeshift C4 water vaporizing device but it is the best place for me._

Nat was not stupid… just tired. She knew that Rappaccini had cut her off somewhere and she picked up the trail based on where the pipes were bursting. She saw her charge into the Rand Enterprises Chemical Plant and she spent ten seconds catching her breath before pulling out her gun and running into the chemical plant after her.

Inside, she finally allows herself a quick break but limited herself to only thirty seconds. She looked over to the elevator doors and saw them closed and the lights weren't on, meaning that the elevator was no longer working.

_If I was a supervillain,_ Nat asked herself._ Where would I go to a place like this?_

If the answer was as simple as a math question on paper, she would've figured it out. The only place she could think of was at the very top.

_If she spread the gas throughout the city and she has only one device to vaporize that gas and it has an antenna, then she would go to the top floor for a better signal. Either that or this is the main supply of Midnight Oil._

She finds the door leading to the stairs and charges through it. She stopped only for a moment to look up and count about 100 steps going in a loop.

Rappaccini runs out of gas over halfway up to the monument. Less blood reaches to her head and she collapses forward on her knees. She coughs up blood before taking deep breaths in like she was learning to breathe for the first time. Her breathing exercise was interrupted when her keen senses told her to look down the stairs. She followed them and could barely see a tiny figure running up the steps.

"Romanoff," she gasped/wheezed. "Not yet."

She reaches into her jacket and pulls out a can of spray paint. She shakes it and smirks at the sound of clicking like teeth chattering. She heads down several steps and sprays about fifteen of them as she walks up backward. "I hope you have high pain tolerance, Romanoff."

When Nat did get to these steps, her foot fell right through the wooden step and she barely managed to catch herself but her gun went flying over the edge. However, as she caught herself, she noticed the sticky black tar-like substance that was caked to the steps and her fingers started to burn.

She silently curses in pain before she gripped the railing with both hands and pulled her right leg out but the more contact she made with the black substance, the more sizzling sounds began to give Nat the cringes.

She pulls herself up and has to climb up to fourteen more steps and she was careful to not get her leg trapped or even fall through completely. She was already a hundred and fifty steps up which meant she was at least three hundred feet in the air. If she fell to her death, then this all would've been for nothing.

When she got to the door at the end, she opened with caution. Because she lacked her gun but Rappaccini still had hers, she knew the only weapon she had was her wits. She takes out a pair of gloves and pushes a button on each of them. They light up and reveal themselves to be Black Widow Bites, which she had stolen off her treacherous friend one year ago during Operation: White Widow.

She looked around to access which room she had been in. It was the top floor and there were railings over and the floor was a big grate. She could see several vats of green chemicals below her and wondered what would happen if she were to dive into one. Chemicals are tanks of acid so she would die. The first thing on her bucket list is to die of old age and that was a goal she was determined to achieve.

Aside from that, the room appeared to be an observation room with bulletproof glass in front of her to overlook the whole factory. There were only two windows and neither one had a lock. There was one door labeled exit but it was barricaded from the inside. The lights were off and the only way Nat could see was because her Black Widow Bites gloves were giving off a soft blue light to let her see, but only two feet in front of her.

"Where are you?" she whispered so quietly that not even she could hear her voice. "Face me like a real opponent."

Rappaccini hid in the shadows and raised her gun to her eye level. She aimed her sights with the back of Nat's head and prepared to pull the trigger.

Nat freezes and sweat falls her face like water from an ice-cold cup. She looks in the corner of her eyes, her head slowly turning in the right direction but with determination and will, she stops herself from rotating her entire body off her shoulder. She makes a fist and feels the adrenaline pumping within as she attacks.

She discreetly pulls out two batons from her holster, aware that she is being watched, and clicks them together to make a bo staff. A bo staff version of her Black Widow Bites gloves. She looks up at a sprinkler just five feet above her head. Her bo staff was six feet long and it doesn't take much time to think or act as she shocked the sprinkler with the bo staff.

Rappaccini was slightly startled by the fire suppression system suddenly became active and doused her in smoke and water. She dropped her guard only for a split second but it cost her.

Nat did a one-eighty and she whacked the gun out of Rappaccini's hand like a baseball bat. Rappaccini refused to be reactive and took a proactive approach by reaching for another gun. It was instantly hammered out of her hand but she was hit in the wrist and received a shock.

"Rappaccini?" Nat said as she twirled the bo staff. "Finally, we meet in flesh and blood. This time, no Photostatic Veil mask to conceal your identity."

Rappaccini's eyes lit up in amusement as she moved to the side and kept her guard up. She knew she was no match for Nat Romanoff but she had a high survival instinct combined with high intelligence and was more than ready to do damage to her. "How did you figure it out? How did you escape the hypnotism? I had Rose hypnotize you into killing yourself in the end."

"Why not just outright kill me?" Nat asked. "Would've saved you a hell of a lot of time."

"You're not supposed to die until Project: Flower was complete. You were supposed to be A.I, M's scapegoat, the one to blame when a biochemical weapon spread all over Washington D.C. Then New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, then the whole state. Well, in case you got caught. I was going to finish Project: Flower myself and I needed someone to frame in case things went haywire."

"Have I wronged you in some way?" Nat stops, causing Rappaccini to stop as well. "Is this about the Super-Adaptoid robot I scrapped?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing on this mission was personal. It has always been A.I.M. 's plan to overthrow the government but when it collapsed about a year ago, I was determined to finish the mission. It wasn't easy when you think about it because I had to fake my death, kill everybody that I worked with, and find someone to frame."

The pieces were starting to fit together and Nat was starting to get the bigger picture. "After Super-Adaptoid was scrapped, A.I.M. started collapsing. It was AIM's goal to overthrow the government as always, right?"

She nods.

Nat continues. "If you overthrew the government with a biochemical weapon, then America would hate the government for their failure and then AIM would've used this opportunity to profit and become bigger than before."

Rappaccini claps. "Congratulations. None of this is personal, just a mission that needs to be completed."

Nat began to see some similarities between her and Rappaccini. They were both women working for large organizations, completed and devoted to a task, and they had a partner (ie: Tony and Rose). But there was one thing that separated Nat from Rappaccini.

While Rappaccini puts the mission first before lives, Nat would never harm innocent people to get a mission done. That is where their similarities end. If Nat had stayed committed and devoted herself entirely to the Red Room, then she would've been something like Rappaccini.

_Except I can fight._

Rappaccini lunged for the door. Nat reacted quickly and hit her in the leg. Rappaccini falls to the ground and clutches her calf. Nat hits her several more times and shocks her with a couple of volts of electricity that make her shake like she's having a seizure.

"Enough mind games, Rappaccini, where's the detonator?" She shouldered her bo staff and picked Rappaccini up by her collars. "Where's the goddamn trigger?" She punches the woman in the nose and breaks it. "Where is it?"

She wasn't talking, not surprising on either end. She shoves the villain to the ground and searches her pockets. She found the trigger in her back pocket and took it. She moves to the side and examines it. It was a C4 detonator or an M57 firing device with a short antenna. It looked like the kind from _Call of Duty._ There was only one button, the clacker, and she was worried that if she pressed the clicker one more time, then this whole chemical plant would evaporate with chemicals and the fumes would get to her.

Rappaccini crawls away but not for the door, a table. She pushes herself up and reaches under the table and feels the grip of a gun. _There you are._ She picks herself up to her feet as she pulls out a Webley Hurricane firearm. _You goddamn three-dollar slut, I'm going to murder you in your sleep._

Nat took out an acupuncture needle from a matchbook in her pocket and pricked Rappaccini in the nape._ You stole my acupuncture paralyzing technique now you'll get a taste of the doctor's medicine._

Unfortunately, Nat underestimated how strong Rappaccini's survival instinct, reflexes, and quick thinking was.

Rappaccini gaps in horror and quickly does a one-eighty and shoots Nat.

Nat looks down at her stomach and feels the pain and drug doing the job that it was supposed to do: Tranquilize its target

"Oh shit," Nat slurred as collapsed to one knee. "Motherfu…." She falls on her side and the last thing she saw before the lights went out was Rappaccini freezing up.

Rappaccini stood paralyzed with her arm in a position holding up a tranquilizer pistol and she cracked a smile as she looked down at Nat.

Nat couldn't keep it up any longer. Her eyelids were getting heavy and breath slowing down. Even as she was passing out, she managed to get one partial thought out:

_I hope you choke on y…._


	18. Red Room: FitzSimmons

"Tony," Mercedes called after climbing to the surface and in a gas mask. She made it just in time as FitzSimmons flew the plane overhead again and dropped another round of water onto the town. The mist was quickly clearing up and practically becoming nonexistent. The crowd started to calm down and their behavior for tearing out each other's throats was toned down. There were still a lot of bodies on the ground but the living outnumbered the dead. "Tony!" she ran for her husband as he stepped out of the crowd. "You're not going to believe what I found."

"What?" Tony asked. He had just subdued Rose and had her on the ground with his boot on her back. "What's going on?"

She silenced herself before talking because of Rose on the ground. "Who is this?"

"My biggest fan. She's madly in love with me."

"We ARE soulmates!" Rose said.

"Shut up, Rose. As you were about to say, Mercedes. The love of my life."

"There is a continuous flow of Flower within the entire water supply of the city. Meaning that no matter how many times we dump water, it is still prone to vaporizing in the air unless we take out the primary source."

"Doesn't the detonator blow up the water supply and vaporize the water from there?"

"No, it's using focused microwaves to vaporize the water supply."

"What about the detonator I shot out of Rose's hand."

"That was a ruse," the hypnotist said. "Rappaccini's too smart to expose her real detonator. That detonator, she designed it herself. Like _Batman Begins,_ it vaporizes the water supply with focused microwaves. Isn't it amazing what A.I.M. scientists can plagiarize from movies and recreate into small but lethal devices?"

"Where's the primary source?" asked Mercedes to the obsessive, fanatical fangirl, Rose. "Where is your base of operations? Planning something this big, you must've needed an endless supply to dump the chemicals into the water supply. Where is the main source."

"I'm not talking," she said, still have an ounce of loyalty within her. "I'm no rat."

"Please," Tony begged. "It would make me very happy if you told me." He crouches down and puts his face next to hers. Rose's eyes widened at the feeling of his mask touching up against her cheekbones. She almost fell in a trance and she sighed deeply. "Please, for your idol?"

"Of course," Rose said immediately. "But can you protect me from Rappaccini when it comes to it?"

Tony nods.

"Rappaccini and I have been using Rand Chemical Plant to supply the main load of Midnight Oil. It has a water supply that is connected to the rest of the capital. We spent four weeks dumping Midnight Oil into the water supply. I suspect Rappaccini is there right now, ready to vaporize the entire water supply across the city. One click of her C4 detonator and it will cause a catastrophic event that will turn all of Washington D.C. to a state of madness and prove the A.I.M. The acronym is correct. America Is Mad."

* * *

Nat lifts her eyes open slowly and swings her head from left to right before picking it up and looking forward. She sighs and tries moving her hands, only to feel something tight binding them together. They felt like metal, and she tried prying her hands open but it was futile. For now at least. She sat in the corner on her knees and looked around.

"You slept soundly."

She turned her head to the left and saw Rappaccini sitting down in a wooden chair with the same tranquilizer gun in her right hand. She was sitting down, not in a paralyzed state but sitting down. If Rose wasn't here then how did she get out?

_If she could resist the pain long enough to shoot me unconscious, then she could resist the pain to move her hand and remove the needle herself._

"Don't worry, I won't be causing you any harm. Not yet at least."

She steps out of her chair and keeps the tranq drawn on Nat as she kneels to her level but stays out of reach. "You really pissed me off with what you did with the needle. You pricked me in the back of my neck. I spent thirty minutes moving my hand slowly but painfully to the back and I had to scream in agony just to rip the needle out my neck at the right speed." She pulls out the acupuncture needle from her pocket and holds it inches away from Nat's face. "I'm going to give you a goddamn taste of your own medicine. You three-dollar slut."

Rappaccini drops the tranq gun and punches Nat in the chest. Nat yells in pain, realizing that Rappaccini stole her Black Widow Bites and she was hoisted by her own petard.

The needle was in and Nat was paralyzed, unable to move and with her hands chained behind her back, it didn't look like she was going to be escaping anytime soon. Now she really was at the mercy of Rapapccini as she draws a knife and puts it to Nat's throat.

"I could kill you right now, but I don't want that to happen." She retracts the knife and steps back. Nat's eyes followed her everywhere around the room. "I don't want you to fall yet. You are crucial to my mission. You ARE crucial to my mission." It was starting to sound like she was losing her mind and trying to come up with excuses not to kill Nat. It was like the chemical fumes were getting to her head.

"If you're going to kill me, then hurry it up already. I'm getting tired of villains coming up with excuses not to kill me. You guys aren't that much of a threat if you have to come up with an excuse to not kill me."

"You are vital to my plan. You have to live for a little while longer."

Almost off instinct (or impulsively), she turns her back to Nat and slips on a pair of tactical leather gloves. She reaches inside and pulls out a syringe. "Time to take your medicine." She turns to Nat and thrusts the syringe deep into Nat's neck and pressed the plunger. "Have a good dose of the Carrion Virus."

It felt like something was swimming in her bloodstream. Like an eel swimming down one vein to the other and digging into her heart. She winces and looks up at her enemy with hate and determination in her eyes. She may have been infected with the Carrion Virus (if she wasn't infected already), but she still needed a whiff of Midnight Oil for the insanity process to happen. And since FitzSimmons was unaware of her location and the fact that her wrists were bound together by chains, the chance of getting cured seemed the same as making one jump to the moon and back in under three seconds.

"There you go," Rappaccini pants like she just did a mile run. "Now you're infected. Now, a few more steps must be taken before I can kill you." She takes out the C4 detonator and holds it in front of Nat's face. "I'm going to need one of your hands." She takes out a key and unlocks the chain to her hands. Nat was still unable to move in her paralyzed state and was at her mercy when she wrapped her hand around the C4 trigger. "This is what's going to happen." She grabs Nat's chin and lifts it so they were looking at each other directly in the eye. "This chemical plant is ground zero for the Flower weapon. You're going to press this trigger and when you do, every single tank of hazardous liquid will evaporate into the air as well as the water supply directly below us. Once this happens, the entire water supply across the city will vaporize one after the other like dominos. I'm wearing gloves so when the police find this and you in this factory, going crazy, they will find your fingerprints on the detonator and everyone in America will remember Natasha Romanoff as a former spy from Russia who came to America to poison this 'beloved' country's capital."

_Did she pick me as a scapegoat because I was a former assassin for the Red Room? And I thought it was something personal._

"It's nothing personal, Nat."

_Speak of the devil's whore._

"This is all business. I'm sure you understand as an assassin who kills people to complete missions."

"No," Nat abruptly said. "Don't even try to compare us, Rappaccini. I would never kill innocent people and I would never use a weapon of mass destruction upon a city of civilians."

"And I thought you understood what I'm trying to do," Rappaccini said in an agitated state. "Rose, she was a hypnotist but she was easy to 'hypnotize'. All I had to do was convince her that if she helped me in this task then she would be able to meet her idol and do whatever she wants to him."

_I gotta destroy this detonator. She's a speech type person so I should have more than enough time to think._

"I really should be thanking you for everything you've done, Nat. Once I've scapegoated you, A.I.M. will be bigger and better than ever. I mean, I deserve some credit because I forced you to pull the trigger on this detonator."

_Now you're just getting arrogant._

"I'm afraid this is goodbye now, Natasha Romanoff. As they say in Russian, 'uvidimsya v adu'."

"Save me a seat for me there." _A wolf would chew off its paw, its survival instinct is that fierce. I'm a volk._

Nat headbutts Rappaccini with all she has, breaking through the paralyzed state. The terrorist falls to the ground and her vision spins in all directions.

The trigger remained in Nat's twitching hand and she used her other hand to slowly and painfully move her hand up and yank the needle out. She pulled it out as fast as her shaking and paralyzed hand would allow and it was pulled out with just enough speed.

_Now I know what it feels like to be 'Kiss of the Dragon-ed'._ Rappaccini crawls back and heads for the tranq gun that she dropped. Nat lunges.

_You've got to take her out, Nat. Ignore the pain and stiffness! Your body's not up to it. Been chained and paralyzed for too long. Fight with your head. Use anything that comes to hand as a weapon. There is no time to worry about fighting fair. If you don't drop Rappaccini, you're dead, and so is D.C._

"Not this time!" Nat grabbed Rappaccini by the back and wrapped the chains around her throat and yanked. She yanked like she was trying to push and pull at weights.

She has Rappaccini arches her back up and silently screaming. She claws at the chains but they were too deep in her throat for her to get her fingers under. Her breaths become short and pants like a dog. Something inside her made her realize that this just might be her final stand against Nat. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out another C4 detonator.

Nat spots the trigger in her hand and eyes widen. Seeing that there were two buttons on the trigger this time and her thumb goes for the one colored red. That must've been some kind of self-destruct button.

She kicks Rappaccini in the back with both feet.

Rappaccini's neck pushes deeper into the throats until her head was craned back and a loud snap filled the room.

The thumb pressed the green button instead of the red one. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her life instantly expired.

_Broke her neck._

Nat lets go of the chains and removes the detonator. Now with both detonators in hands, she looks at them both and sees what kind of comparisons she could make. They were virtually identical except the one with the two buttons had a timer on the back that was counting back from four minutes, the same time it would've taken her to run out of the building from this floor.

"Shit, she tried detonating the place but accidentally activated the timer instead. "If this was to a device that uses microwaves to vaporize the water supply, then that means that this trigger must turn on the microwave emitter itself. Gotta find the device."

And with Rappaccini dead, she now has a goal.


	19. Black Widow and Taskmaster

Tony breaks through the door with Mercedes.

Nat tosses both triggers to Mercedes without missing a beat. "We've got less than four minutes to find the main source of Flower before it vaporizes the entire water supply across the city."

The three of them quickly rush down forty feet and scatter across the chemical plant. Nat climbs up a catwalk and gets a better view.

Tony is on the bottom floor with Mercedes on the second. She comes across a control panel and without even knowing which button to press or pull rod to pull, she calls for Tony on the radio. "We're going to need Rose on this one."

"On it," Tony said before running out the front door to grab Rose. He dragged her in by the arm and may have accidentally left a bruise. "Rappaccini's dead, tell us where the main source of Flower."

"Was the timer set?" she asked calmly. "How many minutes are left?"

Tony checks his watch. "Less than three minutes and thirty seconds."

"What a predicament we seem to be in." She walks forward with her hands tucked in her pockets and shoulders shrugged. "When Rappaccini first set up this project, she said that I couldn't be allowed to know where the main source of Flower is within the chemical plant. The timer not only vaporizes the water supply but will blow this factory sky high as well. She needed four minutes to get out of the blast radius. I'm afraid with three minutes and thirty seconds, we won't be able to escape the blast radius."

Tony ground his teeth and grabbed her by the hair and pulled. "Where is the bomb, then? Where is Flower?"

Rose points up to the catwalk. "The bomb is the main control system. It is slowly overloading with a radioactive battery that has to be turned off manually. Even Rappaccini has fail-safe protocols."

"And where is the main source of Flower?"

"It should be in one of the chemical vats. Secretly, one of these chemical vats is just colored water. Look for a vat of chemicals that are colored green and boiling. Once that water in there vaporizes, it will travel down into the water supply and Washington D.C. is history."

Tony looked at her suspiciously, wondering if he should trust her but with only three minutes and fifteen seconds on the line, he had only her word to trust. He relays this information to his wife and sister.

"I'll go to the chemicals." Nat sprinted across the catwalk. She checks her watch, three minutes and five seconds left. She climbs up a small ladder and looks down. She was forty feet above the ground and had a clear view of the chemical plant. There were about a dozen vats of chemicals and all of them were green. "Which one, Nat?"

_Green looking water that is boiling. There are about a dozen chemical vats and all of them were green._

But there was one that stood out. A vat of light green chemicals located just beneath her feet under the catwalk.

These chemicals could've been truly green but they were a very light green color while the other vats of chemicals had a deep, dark tone of green to them. Like it was their natural color. As a precaution, she takes out a flashlight and shines it down, the light reflecting off the water. Food coloring in boiling water reflects off of light.

_Bingo, Jackpot, Blackjack._

"Tony, I found the chemicals, what's the status on the bomb?"

"We're taking care of it," he answered back.

"Okay." She sighs and stands up straight. She puts her finger back to her earpiece after checking the time. "What am I supposed to do?" She had to wait for about fifteen seconds before a reply came back from Tony, who was no doubt, asking Rose for the answer.

"The microwave emitter is hidden inside the chemical vat. The only way to disarm the device from going off is to turn it off in a very systemically way. You'll have to put in a four-digit combination, cut the red, green, and yellow wire in that order, then remove a fully primed grenade that was put there as a precaution. You'll have to do all of this is less than twenty seconds or the water supply will vaporize prematurely.

_Sounds simple: Four-digit combination, three wires, one grenade to remove so the emitter won't blow me up and set off the vaporization prematurely._

She takes out a pair of black goggles and puts them on. She climbs over the railing and grips tighter with her fingerless glove. She takes a deep breath. "What is the four-digit combination?"

2023.

_I'm going to jump into a vat of boiling water and I will do it to save Washington D.C. in three...two…_

She nosedives.

About three seconds later, after jumping off the catwalk and falling forty feet down, she dives headfirst into the vat of boiling water. She accidentally lets out her breath and allows only about three air bubbles to escape from her mouth as she silently screams in agony. The boiling water was much more painful then she predicted and it felt like her flesh was starting to turn to crisps. But she was determined.

She swims down to the bottom, building up a strong tolerance to the pain, and her eyes catch the sight of what looks like a rectangular glass box down at the bottom and it was glowing like a glow stick.

_Four-digit combination: 2023._

She types in the combination on the keypad on the side and the glass box opens from the top. There was a flashlight that was illuminating the box up and also illuminated up a rectangular device with wires going in every direction. Fortunately, there was one of each color.

_Red, green, yellow._

She cuts the wires in that order. Now time for the last part.

_Primed grenade, how to remove._

She spots the grenade and sees the pin missing and it was being held down by duct tape and wires. She had an idea but it was a longshot.

She took out an acupuncture needle form her matchbook and inserted it into the pinhole of the grenade, effectively rending it harmless as if the pin had not been pulled at all.

Tony and Rose were with Mercedes in the control room. They were looking over the control panels and seeing which buttons to press. If there was a sign that the system was going to overload and blow up, where would it go then? What tell-tale sign would there be that the system is overloading?

"How do we stop the factory from overloading?" Tony demanded. As much as he wanted to die a hero, his sister and wife were still in the factory while his daughter was in the hands of a couple of nerds who don't even know how to fight. He and his wife were going to survive and he was going to pull his sister out of the mess as well.

Rose answered, "There's a scaffolding outside and at the top are some cables that have been mixed. All you have to do is disconnect the cables but there is a high chance of being electrocuted. When Rappaccini intertwined the cables together that powered up the electricity within this place, it shocked her numerous times to the point she had me hypnotize her into not feeling any pain."

"Looks like I'm going to have to shut the power down. Where's the breaker?"

"It is upstairs where the scaffolding is. Even if you were to turn off the lights, you would have to do it at the very last second because this place has a backup generator. You disentangle the plugs too early, back up power will restore. And the scaffolding is the only place where cables are intertwined."

"Then how do we stop the system from overloading like a bomb?"

"The cables above us, once they're disconnected, the system will shut down due to overheating but will turn back on in less than thirty seconds. If you don't want the bomb to go off, you have to pull the plug at the very last second so that way when the powers come back on, the system will have cooled down permanently."

"And Rappaccini manage to overload the entire system by a simple push of a C4 detonator?"

"She is that smart."

Tony races out of the control room and looks up at the scaffolding, forty feet to the top. He looks down at his watch and gasps when he realizes that he only has one minute and five seconds left. He climbs up the ladder, going as fast as possible.

Upon reaching the top, it had taken him less than ten seconds and he to wait fifty-five seconds. If Rose was wrong, and this whole factory blew up, he was going to drag his biggest fan to hell with him.

At the top, he spots several large cables that have been intertwined together like licorice and they were giving off steam and sparks of electricity. He looked around the factory and saw multiple other cables interlaced the same way.

_It'd be so much easier to just run away but if Rose is correct, we can't escape the blast radius in under three minutes. Besides, if this is radioactive, then we got to stop the radiation from spreading._

He checks his watch, still only forty-five seconds to go. He waits patiently and grabs the cables.

He screams in agony as the cables shock him with several thousand volts of electricity. He loses his footing and falls over the scaffolding. He reaches his right hand out to grab the ladder but unlike movies where you can just grab ahold of things when you fall and not suffer any pain, he yanked his right arm out of its socket and he screamed even louder the rest of the way down.

He landed on his shoulder and groaned.

"Tony," both Mercedes and Rose shout.

_You were trained in the Red Room, Tony. Shake off the pain._

He clutches his left hand and winces but no one could see it under his mask. He looks up and climbs back up the ladder.

Thirty seconds to go.

He was operating with only one hand and he was primarily right hand dominant and he had to climb with his left. Only three ladder steps away and the ladder begins to shift as if it slipped on ice.

Twenty seconds to go.

He doesn't take any chances and jumps up and grabs the ledge with one hand. He pulls himself up but loses his footing. He hangs onto the ledge with a strong grip and pulled himself up successfully this time.

Ten seconds to go.

Realizing how much time is left, he yells in pain and lifts both of his hands and grabs both cables.

Five seconds to go.

_I've broken my right arm and I'm getting zapped with possibly ten thousand volts of electricity. But this is for my daughter._

Three…

Two…

One…

From the outside of the factory, it seemed that nothing happened. If one was standing outside the factory, they wouldn't be able to hear anything. Nothing but the wind.

On the inside, one could hear Tony's body fall to the ground and smoke like a hamburger on the grill. It was darkness for several seconds before the lights finally came back on. This time, when the lights came back on both literally and figuratively for Tony, he felt relief. Relief that he had accomplished his mission.

He pulled the cables at the right time and he paid the worthy price of getting shocked with eight thousand volts of electricity. The radioactive material that was stored wherever in this factory had no chance of going off now if it suffered a power out during the last second. It was this sense of victory that made Tony close his eyes and rest.

Outside of Rand Enterprises Chemical Plant

There was a place for all the chemicals to go once they were drained, into the ocean.

The water was bubbling up in the ocean and a hand emerges from the water. A matchbook full of acupuncture needles floats to the surface. A hand rises to the surface, wearing fingerless gloves and skin red and scarred from the boiling water.


	20. The Boyfriend

A week has passed since the Flower Incident of D.C. Nat and Tony were once again, back in the hospital. Nat had to have her entire body wrapped in bandages for the longest time with Tony by her side. Tony was almost ecstatic to have his face wrapped because, for the still-mysterious reason, he doesn't like his face being seen.

Nat was loaded onto a stretcher and dragged to a room called 'Advanced Tissue Replacement'. She was put under a technological piece that lit up a green light and shined over her body. She was amazed and slightly confused as to what was happening but when Dr. Cho slowly unwrapped the bandages around her hand, her scarred flesh crispy as wood in a bonfire, the skin began to regenerate. Nat was astonished by this discovery, almost about to pass out from excitement but held her composure. About twenty-five minutes later, the bandages around her body were removed and her entire flesh was healed completely. At least, that's what she thought.

"What is this?" Nat asked.

"We call it the Regenerating Cradle," Dr. Cho answered. "It doesn't regenerate per se, but there's no possibility of deterioration when this occurs. The nano-molecular functionality is instantaneous. Your cells don't know they're bonding with simulacra."

_She's creating tissue. Tissue to replace the skin that I lost in the boiling water. Wow, a scientist who does do good things. Rappaccini deserved to die._

"She's not flatlining, is she?" Tony asked on the other stretcher. "I mean, she is older so she has a higher chance of dying but I'm going to sue if she dies because she is made of plastic."

"She's not made of plastic," Dr. Cho reassured. "She's made of herself. That I promise. Not even her boyfriend will be able to tell the difference."

Nat chuckled as she sat up. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Funny," she said. "Because he made a very generous donation for this operation to happen. Do you know how much money it costs to operate the Regenerating Cradle? Your boyfriend donated three million dollars for this operation to happen."

"I have a boyfriend with three million dollars?" She realized it sounded like a stupid question and that people could mistake her for a girl with amnesia, but she had no boyfriend. No husband, but an ex-fiance.

_Wait a freaking second._

"What was my boyfriend's name?" Another inadvertent and subtle mislead that she may have amnesia.

"He said his name was Aleksey Lebedev. He came down to the hospital personally to pay the money." She turns to Tony and calls him over. "Time for your turn, Mr. Masters. I promise, once this operation is done, you won't have to wear a mask to hide your beautiful face."

"I don't wear a mask to hide my disfigured face. I've been wearing masks since I was four-years-old."

"Why is that? It doesn't seem healthy."

"Like the song by Backstreet Boys, _As Long As You Love Me,"_ he then changed his voice to a singing voice. "And why I wear a mask is still a mys-ter-y."

Nat was taken into the hospital room to recover while Ton's operation took place. Even with the Regenerating Cradle, the wound in her side from six years ago was permanent and unhealable, even by a device that had 'regenerating' in the title. She had come to accept that wound and was even glad that it remained because sometimes, it is better to have and to hold to something that reminded you of who you are in the first place to have to hold and lose something that could prevent you from leaping to the dark side.

_But my boyfriend, seriously. Who the freaking hell is Aleksey Lebedev? I know nobody that goes by my name. Besides, the closest thing I've had to a boyfriend, husband, or even fiance (or rather, ex-fiance), is Alexei Shostakov. What the hell? Is Alexei Shostakov Aleksey Lebedev? If that's the case, what the hell is he doing here in America? Is he trying to chase after me like a hopeless romantic vain boy or is there something else. Until I know for sure, I have to consider my almost-husband to be a threat at all costs. He did leave a few marks like a dog._

Tony's operation finished up. When the doctors weren't looking, he looked at himself in the mirror and smiled that his face was reformed. Then he grabbed the bandages and wrapped them around once more so his face would forever be concealed.

"Aunty Natty," Jeane squealed upon walking into the room. "You're in the hospital again." She jumped onto Nat's bed and hugged her tightly. "Your face, it's not burned like last time."

"That's because my skin is now made of plastic," Nat said. Then she touched her head. Her bald head. "My hair will grow back, don't worry."

"You kinda look like a man with a bald head."

_I look like a man with a bald head? Huh, maybe I could pull a prank on Tony and pretend that I'm a man._

"Where's your mother and Aunt/Uncle FitzSimmons?"

"They're behind me."

And speaking of the devils to flew to heaven and became angels, the three of them walked in the room.

"Nat," Mercedes said with a smile on her face. "How are you doing? Your skin looks remarkable like it was never scarred at all."

"Because she's made of plastic," Jeanne answered. "Don't worry, her hair will grow back."

The four of them chuckled before Jeanne jumped off the bed and FitzSimmons took her to see her father.

Mercedes stayed behind with Nat. She put her hands behind her back like she was talking to a high ranking officer. "It took a week but all of Flower has been eradicated and Washington D.C. is no longer deemed mad. It was a miracle that only seven people lost their lives in the hour it went on. In other news, Rose is serving time but not in prison, a psych ward."

"That's good news indeed."

"And as for Rappaccini, her identity was exposed to the public and Advanced Idea Mechanics was suspended by the US government indefinitely. Its stock prices crashed in less then three days. For all intents and purposes, A.I.M. is done."

Tony was wheeled back into the room in a wheelchair being pushed by Fitz. Even though he could walk perfectly, he insisted on resting his legs. He still had his face bandaged and the first thing he did when he jumped out of the wheelchair was hugging his wife and then the first thing he did do was head for the dresser and pull out his skull mask to put it back into place.

"Can I see your real face?" Mercedes asked.

Tony sighed slightly before he lifted the mask and pulled the bandages off. He showed his real face to her.

"You're beautiful," she said softly.

With his back turned to them, FitzSimmons tried to get a look at Tony's real face but his mask was already back in place.

"Daddy, how does it feel to be in the hospital again?" Jeanne asked.

He wanted to come up with a snarky reply but he could not be that mean to his daughter so he came up with an honest answer. "It feels exhausting."

"I know how you feel," Nat answered. "Come sit next to me, little brother. Niece, sister-in-law, friends, come join up with me as well."

The five of them were officially gathered around Nat's bed and as cruel as they were, they snicked at listening to Nat who has no hair on her head. It was just so funny but they kept their laughs at a minimum.

_I am going to hell for this,_ most of them thought (except Jeanne).

"I know," Nat snapped, "I have a bald head. Laugh later when I can kill you in a place where lives are being saved."

"We're listening, sis."

"I know that Rappaccini, Rose, and Advanced Idea Mechanics are done for, but I have a feeling that there's something else going on." She holds up her hand like she was going to slap Tony but only shows the back of her palm. "My hand was burned from the boiling water and then someone pays three million dollars for my skin to be repaired. The doctors said that it was my boyfriend who paid the money but I don't have a boyfriend."

"You're too good for boyfriends," Fitz said.

"Jeanne says you say that a lot," Simmons added.

"I'm too good for a boyfriend but I have a feeling that the person who sent the money for my body to be repaired just might be my ex-fiance."

"Alexei Shostakov," Tony said as the name tasted like a bad curry to him. "I didn't like him. I didn't like him fondling my sister like she was a trophy."

"We're over, that was nine years ago but I doubt this has anything to do with our failed marriage. What if it was my ex-fiance who sent the money to the hospital? I mean, he would most certainly have the resources and money."

"Alexei Shostakov, he used to be part of the Red Room but is now a pilot for a Russian agency," Fitz said. "I remember him. I like him."

"Who is A-Lexy Shoes-To-Cough?" Jeanne asked and tried her hardest to pronounce his name.

"He would've been your uncle," Nat answered. "But, things didn't work out so we broke it off. I always hoped that he was happy at his job as a pilot but apparently, he's back and he is looking out for me. I don't trust him."

"I mean," Fitz began. "He was the man who was about to become your husband almost nine years ago. Is it such a bad thing that he sent money to have you repaired?"

Nat tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "Let me ask you something, what would you think if a bully from high school paid for your medical bill?"

"I was never bullied in high school," Fitz answered.

"I was," Simmons spoke. "I would be wondering why he would do such a thing if she kept on beating me up. I would be wondering if he was doing it out of guilt or something else. All and all, I would be curious as to why."

"Exactly. If a bully even manages to pay for your medical bill, it is so you can get the full recovery to get beaten up again. It wasn't on the surface but Alexei was a bully. Not to my face but he was a bully to other people."

"Well, the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows," Tony said. "The Red Room did train us to be assassins."

"No, he would use his training to go out and kill innocent people for pastime. He wouldn't be discriminate about his target. I saw him aim his crosshairs at a pregnant woman and when I tried to intervene, the gun went off and the woman was gone. He was physically abusive not to me, but to innocent people, even those who are polite to him. If you spend ten minutes with the real him, you'll start to see that Alexei was something of a sociopath. I didn't want to be with him so I broke off the marriage but I don't think he handled it well. We haven't had contact in nine years and he pays money for my hospital operation."

"Maybe he still loves you," Jeanne suggested.

"Pay money to have my skin repaired from wounds that aren't even fatal, to begin with? It's almost like he wanted me repaired and back in shape for something."

"Maybe he wants you to look good for the next time when you meet him?" suggested Tony.

Nat gave him an are-you-stupid look. "Alexei may be a sociopath but he has no concerns about looks, only performances. Maybe he sent the money cause he thought that my wounds would interfere with my performance."

"Even if that's the case, then what do you need your Black Widow performance for? The worst that could happen is he came back to haunt you."

"He paid three million dollars. It would be easy pickings if he used the money that was funded to the Red Room but the Red Room is disbanded."

"So where could the money have come from? It could've come from his pilot salary, of course?"

"Unless it still came from the Red Room. I know it's a longshot, but Alexei has always been a firm believer in the Red Room. Even if he took advantage of what he has learned, he is a true patriot to his country and the Red Room. If he paid three million dollars, then it must've come from the Red Room."

"Which means what?"

"Which means that he is coming to America. If he isn't coming back from Russia to reunite with his lost love, then he is coming back to reunite with his lost love because she is the one who tore apart the organization that trained him and even gave birth to his alter-ego that he adores so much, the Red Guardian."

"So it's both business and personal."

Nat nods. "That's all I can think of." Her eyesight drifts off the side as more deductive information comes drilling into her skull. "If he did pay with Red Room money, then that means he wants me in the best shape possible for what comes next."

"And what is coming next?"

Nat really wished she had an answer to that question.

* * *

**And this concludes the second installment of the Black Widow trilogy. Thank you for reading, hope you had a good time, and leave a review, follow, and/or favorite it. Until then, The Alpha Gray Wolf is out.**


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